Americans Discovering Orthodox Christianity with Cleave to Antiquity

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The hell. All right, Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. This
is doctor David Patrick Carey with Church of the Eternal
Logos and I am joined by Ben from Cleave to Antiquity.

(00:26):
How you doing today, brother.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Pretty good? Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Man, dude, thanks for having me on. That was actually
I was just holding you backstage. This is the first
stream I've done basically two weeks. So my wife and
I just moved, so allah the new background here. But
right before I actually moved, one of the last things
I did was go on your channel and fielded some questions,

(00:50):
mostly about icons. Protestants had big hang ups with icons
and Mary yeah, yeah, but yeah. We we fielded questions
for about two and a half hours over on your channel.
So thanks for having me on over there. And you know,
obviously most people watching here is probably already familiar with
your journey and your conversion, but we're gonna kind of

(01:12):
build upon that today. We're not gonna focus so much
on just you, although we're gonna get The first thing
I'm gonna ask you is to describe a little bit
about for anybody who'd be watching now or in the
future who may not be familiar with you or your
apologetic work as a Protestant before do you mind kind
of introducing yourself and and why you've kind of been

(01:35):
making the rounds on the Orthodox scene and really having
a bunch of people on your channel too, fielding questions.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, it's been it's been an awesome,
an awesome journey so far. But for those of you
that don't know me, my name is Ben. My channel's
Cleave to Antiquity. Was an associate pastor at a Protestant
church and I would do Protestant apologetics and debates and
things like that. Have been on several you know the
bigger I guess Protestant shows, Gavin Ortland, shows on Redeem

(02:03):
Zoomer Ruslan so on and so forth. I've done done
debates with Roman Catholic linguistic scholar Trent Dougherty, you know
several other people. But eventually, you know, in the in
the journey of studying church history and kind of when
you when you do debates, you kind of have to
have a coherent worldview, like a complete it has to

(02:27):
be a complete circle. When you have like a little
chink in the armor, it it makes you reflect and
then you have to kind of bridge that somehow, and
for me, most of those little those chinks in the
armor were historical claims I would have to go back
and reevaluate. So I think from an intellectual perspective being
faced with corrections on some of the on some of

(02:50):
the framework that I was using before. Like if I
would do debates on like Marian devotion, I would cite
like sub to and presidiums like two fifty eight early
is Mary devotion or something. So it's like, okay, so
I've got a good two hundred and fifty years before
you know, I have to worry about any of this stuff. Well,
I can kind of, you know, I can work with
that a little bit rhetorically. But I remember having a
conversation with Craig Truglei and he's like, well, you know,

(03:13):
there's this etching on the side of the Church of
the Annunciation that says Hill Mary, and I was like, ah,
I got you. You know, that could just be the
annunciation of Luke right, like they're just quoting scripture. He's like, yeah,
but what about these and catacombs that are talking about
you know, I'd forget the name. But it was like
Cornelius Pray for us or something. I'm like, okay, first
second century, that's that's a little tough to deal with.

(03:34):
So you know, you have to reevaluate that kind of
that kind of framework consistently from the Protestant perspective. And
I came to realize after some time that a lot
of my critiques, you know, with with the Orthodox when
I would do debates, are really like practice things. It's
not so much like the actual theology. It'd be like
application of canons or like you know, so on and

(03:56):
so forth, right, which is not a good enough reason
and to not become Orthodox. So the real key thread
that started to get pulled was really diving into eucharistic theology.
So you read like John six fifty three through sixty
talks about the Euchrist is necessary, talks about you know,
I will abide in you, you will ably to me.

(04:17):
If you do not eat my flesh and blood, you
have no life in use. It's okay, this is necessary language.
How do I know I have a valid Euchrist?

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Right?

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Go look at Matthew sixteen eighteen. Matthew eighteen eighteen talks
about the keys to buying and loose given to all
of the apostles right, Matthew sixteen eighteen says, I will
give you the keys Matthew eighteen eighteen, they're actually given
and all the apostles, So apostolic succession is necessary to
be able to have a valid Euchrist right, and then
look at Acts one, Well they had successors. So you know,

(04:45):
there's some pieces of my framework that need to be adjusted.
And ultimately I had all that information at some point,
but I needed I need that little spark of grace
to bring to bring light to that information. And once
that happened, it was you know, I had to I
had to go, well, if I if I believe this
is the church that Christ established, then nothing's going to

(05:06):
stop me from wanting to enter into her.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Well, that's what I was gonna lead to. Next is
the sincerity of what it sounds like your journey. I mean,
when was the moment that you like felt like you
had to make a decision. Because I've talked with a
lot of Protestants. I have a lot of friends that
are Protestant, and when it comes to Orthodoxy, once you
get over the differences from Catholicism, they realize you're not Catholic.

(05:29):
And then a little bit more nuanced. Obviously your approach
doing apologetics, you had a much stronger understanding of the
delineations between these traditions. But they'll say, Okay, I agree
with that. I agree with that, but they always have
these hang ups. And it sounds like you were aware
of many of the canons, and you were aware of

(05:49):
many of the you know, traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy. What
was it that kind of just pushed you over the edge.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
I think I think maybe the thing that started to
started the avalanche was being actually convinced of, well, it
would be a it would be a couple of different things,
because it was a it was a complete reevaluation of
the worldview. But I guess it started with accepting Apostolic
succession as basically an Apostolic tradition. And that's what that's

(06:20):
what the early church father's point to it, as this
is an Apostolic tradition. So if you're if you're consistent
in your worldview and you believe that Apostolicity is, you know,
I guess, kind of a benchmark for binding. I guess,
I guess Apostolicity would be a benchmark for I guess
later on infallibility. That might be getting too deep in

(06:42):
the weeds. But if you're operating from that framework, then
if you can prove apostolic succession is an Apostolic tradition,
you have to submit yourself to it. So that was
one thing that really I guess was like a rock
that was moved that started the avalanche.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
And you didn't make the move immediately think oh that
I'll become Anglican or high Lutheran. No, we talked about
in your stream. Some people still claim that Apostolic connection
within those high forms of Protestantism.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Right right, Well, the problem with that is if you
were to take so let's say, look at the church
the first millennium. Right, So, if you're an Anglican, you
say you hold to the Ecumenical council somewhat right, but
you don't hold to any of the anathemas, like you
say that the non Calcedonians are cool, you know, so
on and so forth. You have branch theory. So if

(07:36):
you're operating under that Anglican framework, you can kind of
just I mean, how are you actually holding to the
ecumenical councils? How are you applying the cannons you're really not.
You're just kind of holding to the general idea. And
even if you were to look at a lot of
the different Anglican groups, many of them reject the Seventh
Ecumenical Council, And if those that don't, that's a huge

(07:57):
issue for their framework because you look at the thirty
nine articles, they're iconoclastic. So like, I don't know if
you if you can another thing, when you look at
archaeological evidence of the early Church, you see icons everywhere.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Dude labored that point over on your stream.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, how are you how are you going to how
are you going to accept an iconoclastic framework with the
early Church having tons of icons and no, we're actually
retrieving uh, you know, apostolicity by rejecting right well that
we had.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
A couple of comments over on your channel where people
were claiming that the icons basically were invented around the
time of the Seventh think you Medical Council, or that
there was no evidence before like the six hundred. It's like, dude,
what do you what are you talking about? These are
just historical facts. Whether you like icons, it's just a
historical fact that they were being used in pedagogical and
liturgical purposes.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, there's like a firestorm right now on Twitter where
people are fighting over icons. I don't know if you
noticed that. There there's a Catholic gentleman, Kevin from since
thirty three a d That made the claim that icon
veneration isn't present in the early Church. I guess maybe
not not realizing that means he rejects and I see
it too, since it claims specifically the reason for its inclusion,

(09:16):
you know, as necessary for the Church is that it's
an Apostolic tradition. So if you claim it the development,
you're the fact they rejecting. And I see it too,
So that's a bit of an issue. But some of
the Protestants kind of like grabbed his argument. We're like, oh, look,
we believe we agree with the Catholics. It's the Orthodox
that are out of the bounds here, you know.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Right, Yeah, that totally undermines the Catholic position and even
their their use of statuary and stuff like that, which
has a different totalizing theology from our use of icons.
But this similar premise is that God was actual man
in sanctified matter, and so creation itself can be used
to glorify God. But how would you how would your

(09:57):
are you're married? Correct?

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (10:00):
So how was your wife's reception? That's always a big
talking point, and you kind of hinted at it in
our combo, but we didn't really dive into it. I mean,
it wasn't my job to pry and ask questions like
it is right now. But you know, so many men
that I've talked to and done one on ones with
converting into the Orthodox Church. One of the things is

(10:21):
usually the men are a little bit more obsessive, and
so just like you being ahead, being a bookworm and
really interested in history, which was that in the coherency
of the theologies? What just convinced me I gotta go Orthodox?
I mean, the historical argument I think is incredibly compelling.
If you're going to be honest about now. I think
that's what your testimony is so interesting, is because once

(10:43):
you were kind of confronted with the things that you
said you believed in what you're looking for, you actually
made the choice and you made the move. But so
many men, it's us guys that like take this stuff serious,
and then the women are like, are you joining a cult?
Like what is this? You know you're there trying to
explain the essence energy distinction, you know, at dinner, and

(11:04):
it's like, so sometimes the women aren't as enthusiastic as
the men are about these conversions to orthodox Sometimes I
have actually, uh, you know, shout out to a kingdom kid.
We have women that actually convert Orthodoxy and then drag
their husbands kicking and screaming into the church. But mostly
it's men. And I'm curious, within your circumstances, how was

(11:26):
she very willing? Was she kind of submissive to your
understanding and said, well, if that's what you think, then
we'll do it.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, I think. I mean at first, obviously a bit
of a shock. I mean we've had conversations about We've
had conversations about church history and things like that, so
it wasn't like a huge like jump scare surprise. But
when when I finally made the decision, you know, and
I'm like, hey, this is what we're gonna do, you know,

(11:53):
there was a little bit of pushback, of course, but
I think understanding that understanding and expecting it, you know,
uh so I'm not like, I know, I'm not gonna
win this as an argument kind of deal helped and more,
just like all right, this is the time I need
to like really lock in. I'm gonna do I'm gonna
do the dishes, I'm gonna fold the laundry, you know.
I think I think with I was talking about this
with uh father John Whitford, and he was he gave

(12:17):
the advice to somebody else and he was like, you're
never gonna win them with like an argument, like you've
got to like you gotta win them over with the
culture and that kind of like they need the social
they need the the socializing aspect, because I mean, I
was an associate pastor. You know, we're super plugged into
our church. We knew everybody. You know, it's like family.

(12:38):
So it's like asking you to like leave your family
is a hard thing, right. But what I was what
was really helpful for me was we had good friends
that are local that go to Worthox Church. We visited
with them, We went and visited their ro Corp parish
and then afterwards went you grabbed launch. It was like, oh,
these are like normal people, like you know, Okay, so
now maybe I can see that I'll have community here

(12:59):
and this will be good thing. I think that definitely helped.
But it also helps that I don't know. I'm just
I'm blessed. My wife is awesome.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
You know.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
She was like, I disagree on some things, but you know,
you're my husband. I'm gonna go where you go.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
So that's a good woman. Yeah. We we appreciate hearing
her willingness to follow you. It sounds like she's a good,
good Christian wife. And you know that that journey leaving
your parish, you know, one of the things that I
always can see the Catholics. I have a couple of
Catholic friends who are still struggling. They're kind of convinced

(13:34):
intellectually of Orthodoxy, but they won't leave Catholicism. And it's
because of the ancestral identity with Catholicism. But with Protestants
it's not so much ancestral as it is the communities
that you're actually a part of the fabric, being part
of the fabric of the community. And and as we
mentioned over on your channel, that was my advice for

(13:56):
anybody wanting to join the Orthodox Church. Any guy and
your wife, your girlfriend's reluctant, you got to find other
women for her to talk to, because it's about the
social entrance is kind of the essential gateway, at least
I found not for every woman. There's some women, you
know that are convinced by rational argumentation, probably not the

(14:16):
majority for anybody out there, so finding a social network
for them to belong to is usually the go to.
And that kind of leads to the question that I
was telling you in the on backstage that I wanted
to pray and get your perspective on. I don't know
if you've been thought about this or been asked this question,
but one of the things that I felt converting to

(14:39):
Orthodoxy is that, you know, I grew up in a
Methodist family, kind of conservative Methodist, and then our family
identity for at least four or five generations is tied
with the Methodist Church. And when I then left that
and became new age pro psychedelic, dabbling in the occult,
and then eventually find out my way to the Orthodox Church,

(15:02):
I felt like it was almost like a correction of
my ancestral tree. And thinking about you know, deep ancestry
goes back to Western Europe and before the schism, it's
all sort of Orthodox one Church, and I kind of
always felt that, I think I mentioned it early on
this channel. One of the very early videos that that
was kind of my perspective on this sort of ancestral

(15:26):
historic transition that I was a part of, and how
it was like a fixing of the family tree so
that we have a strong foundation, a true foundation to
build because my children and their children and hopefully their
children will all be Orthodox, and so it's kind of
a recentering of these historic processes from the Schism to
the Reformation, the Enlightenment, all this different stuff. And my

(15:48):
wife told me the same thing. She's a Volga German,
so they're a mixture. They're Germans that lived in Russia
for hundreds and hundreds of years and have like a
mixture of German Russian culture. They speak Russian. And though
when she became Orthodox, she felt the same thing. Curious
for you coming out of the life that you were

(16:08):
in as an associate pastor and your Protestant background when
you convert, or is this process of conversion because obviously
you still have to become a catech human that's going
to take probably a year at least, do you view
it in any sort of ancestral correction or a larger perspective,
or is this like this is just the right thing
to do? And it's kind of divorced from your ancestors.

(16:31):
What are your thoughts on I know that's kind of
long winded question, but what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, I think that's I think that's intrinsic to the
entire question. Right, like you were my ancient Christian ancestors,
did their worship look more like the worship of the
Orthodox Church? Or did it look more like my Protestant
concept of worship? And am I even a part of
the same church? Am I a part of the same religion?

(16:56):
Broadly speaking? You know what I mean? And I guess
the answer the answer to that would be from the
Protestant perspective, No, you're not a part of the same church,
because you're you're a schism of a schism. At that point,
it ultimately is a historical question. And if you're if
you're going to look at the question of your your ancestry,
if you're going to look at like my background almost

(17:17):
entirely English, so similar kind of ancestry, you know, from
that perspective, pre schism church, what does it look like?
Does it look like any of the Protestant denominations today?
Does it look like the Roman Catholic Church, the modern
Roman Catholic Church, or does it look like the Orthodox Church? Well, yeah,
it would be the Orthodox Church. Even theologically. We can

(17:39):
look about we can look at esthetics. Look at some
of the catacomb churches in Rome. We were talking about
that in our life room that we did on my channel.
Look at the catacomb churches in Rome. They've got the
they've got the domes with the uh with the icons
all over the walls. What does it look like? Looks
like the architecture of a modern Orthodox Church, the same
as today. So the question of like that ancestral retrieval

(18:04):
absolutely and taking taking bits and pieces of your worldview
and twisting them or innovating them or modernizing them in
any way. From the Protestant perspective, it's like a complete
modernization of it. But even the smallest tweak has ramifications downstream.
So yeah, absolutely, it's a it's a correction of not

(18:26):
only the worldview but also the view of being in
a real communion of the Saints, having a great cloud
of witnesses around us. Actually having the Saints is like
our family members basically in a more I guess tangible way.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Right, what are your thoughts about the future of Protestantism.
I mean, having been so deeply enmeshed into American Protestantism
in the twenty first century, one of my theories is,
I do believe in the next God willing we're here
for another century or two, the human species Protestantism is

(19:01):
pretty much going to die away. When you look at
like the Pew Research Center in regards to the average
age of attendee, it's Orthodoxy, Islam, and Hinduism and Buddhism
in America that have an average age below forty and
then Catholicism, which is the next one. I think there
was like forty two average age, but then the Protestants

(19:22):
are like in the sixties or higher. So there's a
huge generational difference in regards to the average attendees. But
just the staying power of Protestantism, I argue that there
is no Protestant formally Protestant nation. You could argue that
it's still explicitly Christian. I mean, people make the case
that America is still Christian. I mean, you can, But

(19:43):
my larger point is we're the biggest exporters of degeneracy.
It's not exactly the epitome of a Christian nation. But
what are your thoughts on Protestantism if you had to
speculate the next century or two, where do you think
it's going. Do you think that they'll have their own
so maybe a third wave revival, or it's going to

(20:05):
merge in designism is going to grow, or what are
your thoughts on Protestantism moving forward?

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, I was talking about this recently on Expert We
were sharing some some statistics from the LCMS, which is
a conservative Lutheran denomination, one of the main lines, and
they have projections that they will fall under what was it,
fifty thousand weekly attendants overall by what was it twenty

(20:31):
eighty or something, So that's next to nothing. They're at
like over a million right now. So if they continue
at the rate they're going, they're basically gone wow by
twenty eighty. So that answers the question from that perspective.
I didn't know that work, so yeah, let me see
because I had a chart with all the statistics that
was shared. But the PCA fared no much not much better.

(20:54):
PCUSA didn't fare much better. I think what we would
end up seeing if we see a remnant of Protestant
isn't remaining after the next one hundred years. It's going
to look more of like a low church evangelical type
of institution because within that type of framework, right, if
the church stinks, the church closes down, you just open
up a new church, and they have such a low

(21:14):
bar for entry. It's I mean, anybody that is like
a relatively well read Christian can just become a pastor
and then open up a church or something, or they
become a pastor at the other church because they're well read,
and then they go off and they plant another one.
It's very easy to spread from there. So I think
within the Protestant context, that's probably what we're going to

(21:35):
see more like megachurch style worship. I don't think that's
dying off. Maybe anytime soon. It might as people, but
we would have to trust then that people are going
to become more and more intelligent and wise to think.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
I won't put my money on that bet.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, I think the mainlines are gone next hundred years.
Anglicanism is already going down the tube. I mean, look
at the Archbishop of Canterbury is a woman that you know,
is like pro on a living you know, babies in
the womb, so I don't have much of more.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Than she does. Traditional Christians.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, yeah, it's a mess. It's a mess. Out of
all of the mainline Protestant institutions, there's really only one
or two that you could argue would be you know,
somewhat conservative, and that would be the LCMSs, and then
maybe the Anglican Continuum. But I don't know if you
can consider the continuum main line. But I think either
way we're seeing all those disappear in the next hundred years.

(22:35):
We were talking about just a second ago, the ages
of the congregations, the mainline denominations, Like you said, they're
like above sixty on average.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
So average, Yeah, so I mean at best that cohort
has what twenty to thirty years being able to be
regular church attendees. And you know, I make the argument
that Protestantism, because it's so rationally based and how you
relate to God, that it's more of an ideology than religion.

(23:07):
And I wouldn't say it's not religion, of course I
would as a religious aty scholar. But my argument is
the lack of sacraments and the real presence, so magic
itself is about imbuing matter with spiritual properties. So that's
the whole point of ritual magic could be. You know,
there's a lot of variations than in how you do
that sex magic, black magic, ritual magic, sigil magic, but

(23:31):
that's the whole principle. Then then what we're doing with
the Eucharist and actually participating with the mystical reality of
Christ and Protestantism because it doesn't take that sacramental approach,
it feels like it competes with communism and capitalism or
neoliberalism ideologies more so than it actually can deal with

(23:54):
like the real spiritual warfare underway in America. What are
your thoughts on that as somebody coming out of thetant
world and moving into the Orthodox, because you mentioned the
sacraments and the real presence in the in reading you know,
the Gospel of John and and if that stuff is real,
which obviously every Orthodox believes, it makes sense then why

(24:15):
Hollywood is even pushed this stereotype even further that when
somebody needs an exorcism, they go to the Catholic Church.
Now I don't believe that, you know, in the real
presence of the of the Catholic sacraments, but they are
certainly closer to that, and they are a sacramental church,
and so they can, actually, I would argue, deal with
the occult in a real way, a real meaningful way

(24:36):
that most Protestants can't. What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, I mean with the Catholic Church sacramental in the
in the sense that they they claim to have sacramental theology.
Maybe not so much that they don't click this out
of context. We're not saying they have valancies act, yes,
but yeah, I mean from the Protestant perspective, you have
the kind of higher church Protestants that would have sacramental
theology like the Lutherans, right, they believe in real presence

(25:02):
of the Eucharist, a baptismal or generation so to the Anglicans,
but it's a different understanding. It's consubstantiation, so they hold
that it's a spiritual presence of Christ and the Eucharist,
rather than say like real presence or maybe when people
say transubstantiation sometimes people get the ick. But if you
understand it from the Orthodox perspective, not so much as

(25:23):
taking in Aristotelian distinction, but just that Christ is truly
present in some mysterious way we are interacting with I
think I think, no matter what you do, if you
don't have the essence energy distinction, you don't really have
a you don't really have a kind of true or
what's the way that I want to address this, maybe

(25:45):
a coherent framework for your eucharistic theology, because if you
don't and you're operating from the perspective of divine simplicity,
what are you really interacting with? Are you You're not
saying you're interacting with God's uncreated in energies. You're saying
you're interacting with what the essence? Are you? Are you
saying you're participating in the essence? Because I don't know,

(26:09):
I don't know any theologian that would say that. Or
are you are you interacting with like created grace? Are
you gonna say the euchars has created great like You
run into all sorts of kind of logical blunders there.
But as far as like not having the medicinal properties,
I think take it a step further. Not having the
doctrine of theosis is a kill shot for a lot

(26:31):
of the Protestant perspective.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Well, just that that single doctrine has afforded all the
heresies that they have, at least in the Orthodoxy. I mean,
whether it be Arianism or dose it to I mean,
maintaining the possibility of true union with God and the
transformation of man into something divine, Like, that's the whole
thing that has to be maintained. And so the defense

(26:53):
of the faith is dealing with these heresies that emerge
that then contradict this singular truth. Obviously there's more to
Orthodox than that, but that really is the heart, that
is the core that is being protected. And so you
make your perfect point that they they don't have that.
And so how how do most Protestants believe they're engaging
with God? I'm not even sure. I mean, you talk

(27:14):
with the average person who's not a theologian, what is
their opinion matter? I would assume they would probably say
that they interact with the essence of God, not knowing
what even that means philosophically speaking or theologically. But what
what is the response to Protestants. Do they just adopt
aquinas or or how do they deal with like do
you directly engage with God?

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, typically they'll adopt like Toumistic well maybe not maybe
not Tomistic theology per se but it's just kind it's
a carryover from the West. I mean, it's all it's
all post schism Western theology. So they're already it's that
the framework is already built in intrinsically, especially with high
Church Protestants. Now, if you talk about low church Protestants

(27:56):
that come out of like the Radical Reformation, they don't
have any roots at all. Really, it's just kind of
like we're ringing it, you know, we can kind of
make up whatever we want, which is why we see
so many so much deviation in theology today amongst like
say the Charismatic movement or like the Baptists, or you know,
so on and so forth. You'll see a bunch of

(28:16):
deviation where they're just kind of in some instances it
seems like making it up on the fly. But I
think kind of going back, there was a point I
wanted to make about the medicinal aspect from the perspective
of any Protestant if you were to hold to sola fide. Okay,
now some people would contend this isn't the case, but
they're probably coping to to try to keep their framework intact.

(28:39):
I'll just say that, so from from the perspective of
sola fide. Okay, well, faith alone saves, so what what
what use is works? Works would be okay, Well they
are the evidence of a genuine saving faith. Okay, so
there's no there's no cooperation with the Holy Spirit there
to give you that deifying grace because you co opt

(29:00):
with the Holy Spirit. It's not like our works are
giving us grace. It's co operating with the Holy Spirit.
I'm not grieving the spirit, right, I'm abiding in God's will.
I'm receiving the grace. I'm receiving the grace at sacramentally,
I'm receiving it in the life of the church. In
some sense, you could say, you know, sacramentally in almost
every aspect, but from the Protestant framework, you don't have
that medicinal faosis application of grace in that sense. The

(29:23):
application of grace is sanctification. It's just, oh, this is
more evidence that I'm saved, basically, right, this is more
evidence I have that saving faith and I'm not. Don't
for the Protestants that are watching, if any don't think
I'm conflating this with one with one saved always save
them not. But if you were to say I don't know.
If you believe in sola fide, then works are just
an outflowing of your genuine faith. So your entire life

(29:46):
then just becomes pocket watching yourself to see if you
have genuine faith, over and over and over again until
you die. That's why a lot of Protestants, I think,
suffer from anxiety so much. There's no, it's not a
process of transformation. It's more I'm I'm fruit checking myself
for the rest of my life until I'm dead. Right,

(30:09):
it's a little more nihilistic.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
I think, Yeah, that makes sense. And again that doctrine
of sanctification. You know, I come out of the Methodist
Church in Wesley. That was one of his things. But
hearing that growing up when I first was exposed to
Orthodox like, oh, okay, theosis that must be working. But
then you hear the nuance of what we're talking about,

(30:30):
you know, And this isn't for everybody, you know, I
don't expect every Christian to get into the nuances of
how one becomes deified. And you know, there's a lot
of people you go to Orthodox Church, the Babushka there
is not you know, she's not reading Palamas in her
free time. But for those that are interested, once you
see that delineation and you see the as you're talking

(30:50):
about the coherency of the world views, which is really
what apologetics is about. Orthodox he's the only one that
puts everything in its proper place and where it makes
sense and explains it and it correlates with scripture. Right,
So that was one of the you know, we hear
the Protestant hang ups like, oh, you guys are the
tradition of men? Really? Because your book is absent a

(31:11):
handful of books that you claim these councils that are
divinely inspired put in script you know, put in the cannon.
So who's the Who's exactly the tradition of men? But
you hear that so often.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's just a tradition of man. Don't
you understand that? Yeah? Well, I mean from that from
that perspective there, I mean, if you're going to operate
from that soul of scripture framework, you're talking about traditions,
right right, everything outside of scripture. Scripture is the sole
infallible authority, right, So that would be the only thing
that's infallible is a scripture alone. All traditions would then

(31:46):
be fallible outside of that including dogma. You have fallible dogma?
What do you mean? So you can't another thing? They
can't objectively tell you who is and isn't a Christian.
If you can't objectively answer that question, it's a very
fun the mental paradigm level question. You can't answer that
for me, And I'm not talking about knowing somebody's salvation

(32:07):
or something, but knowing whether or not that person's a
Christian at all. So it is a Dostist, Christian is
a modernist. A Christian is a you know, fill in
the blank. Are all these people actually Christians from your paradigm?
Can you answer that for me objectively? That the Protestant
can't because they have fallible dogma, they have fallible tradition.

(32:30):
So none of that stuff is answered for us within
the scripture alone. So they just kind of have to
take a subjective shot in the dark.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Right well, and you you know, go to a Protestant
parish and start asking these theologically nuanced questions and you'll
find a variety of answers. And so to your point,
they can't even determine who's a Christian, and they're also
reluctant then to make any sort of universal claim on
a true church, and that's where they have this sort
of spiritual body. Right. You ask, you know, people that

(32:57):
believe in the rapture or something like that, and you're asking, like, well,
who's then part of this spiritual church. Well, I don't know,
but if they're a true believer in Christ, they're part
of it. It's like, well, it's the presuppositions. And maybe
it's part of the Reformation, the Enlightenment that it's all
built upon, but it's it's already opened itself up for
a humanism. And so when we're looking at the real

(33:18):
threats right now in the twenty first century regarding demographics,
Islam is here to stay. As I just mentioned to
you regarding the Pew Research Center, I think the average
age of a Muslim worshiper was like thirty two thirty three.
So and luckily the US, you know, we don't have
as many you know, per capita like Europe does right now.

(33:41):
But you're seeing the Hindus in the Indians and they're
totally transforming, you know, these cities here in the Midwest.
I can speak based on firsthand experience, and I just
don't see outside of that's not the America I grew
up with for Protestants, like what the defense is because
they've already open in themselves up to not only a

(34:02):
humanism amongst themselves, across the variety of Protestant faiths and
then Christianity generally speaking, but all this interfaith stuff which
is very very common. And so I don't see Protestantism
being any sort of speed bump or preventive mechanism against
the radical transformation of America which is going to come

(34:24):
if if there isn't some type of true spiritual revival.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, I was thinking about that too, just from the
practical sense, right without any without any real church unity.
So Protestantism is very divided, and it's it's not I mean,
I think it can be a good rhetorical device for
them to use to kind of cite it as an
umbrella if they're talking about like statistics, Oh look at
how look at our numbers, right, like we have more,

(34:50):
But if you break it down individually, but denomination, it's
not so good. And all of the infighting really would
not Like let's say there was some sort of crisis, right,
we're getting over and by uh, you know, by Muslims
or whatever in the United States. Just like you said,
Protestantism isn't going to be able to put up any
kind of defense against that. You have to have some
kind of unifying body. That body would be the Church.

(35:12):
Is Roman Catholicism going to really push back too much
right now? We can see what the current.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Wants with your new Muslim prayer center in the Vatican.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
I don't think they are well. And you've got you've got.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Leo making doing like the open the Border speeches and
stuff like that. I mean, there's no way going down.
I have some thoughts. I have some thoughts about the
origins of all of that stuff. I mean talk about
freemasonry and things like that, and uh, you know, infiltration
from a geopolitical aspect, you know, I think certainly plays

(35:44):
a part in that. But really the only the only
system that would practically put forth any kind of resistance
in that sort of situation would be from an orthodox paradigm,
and the only way that we're really going to save
because this is what's coming, by the way, this is
what it's coming. It's coming to the UK. We're gonna
we're gonna see a crisis there in a very near future.
I don't think it's gonna take too long. It's already

(36:05):
a crisis now, but we're gonna see escalator, right.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
It just hasn't turned physical yet, correct. Well, I mean,
well it's not like you know, it could get true
true violent resistance, is what I'm saying. I mean, even then,
there's been little spots of it. But you're just with
the flags, right, I mean you're seeing that just by
people putting up the Union jack all over the UK,

(36:29):
that this has been problematic for all the migrants, and
you're I just watched the video the other day of
some Indian MP in the UK talking about how I
get your sentiments, but this is really making people feel
uncomfortable the flag of the country people are in, right,
So it's already at a precipice in putting up the
flag is a certainly non violent form of sort of

(36:51):
identity and resistance. So yeah, I think I think the UK,
and we talked about this on your channel, I mean,
it's in the worst position. I don't I don't know
how they get out of it without physical violence, and
it's going to happen soon.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, I think the only way we avoid it in
the US is by making the US Orthodox to be complied.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, I agree with that.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Because I mean, think about it. You if let's let's
look at the alternatives. So either we stay where it
is right now, where we you know, we've got a
Protestant majority. It's becoming more and more secular by the
day there, like you said, adopting have already adopted Enlightenment values,
more Ecumenism, so on and so forth, which I think,
I mean, to be honest, you can, you can. You

(37:33):
can say Acumanism in and other forums basically just freemasonry
because if you were to read a text like the
aut of indeeda right, the pushing, the pushing, the kind
of principles of the Enlightenment, that was kind of the
playbook within the Ault of Indeed to begin with. It
was religious luralism, it was a separation of church and state.
It was so on and so forth. So you can
slap the free Masonic label onto the Acumenism movement that's

(37:57):
prevalent throughout every single main line just about every single
mainline Protestant movement, with maybe the exception of the LCMS.
But they're going to die out because of their kind
of older aging congregation. But look at Anglicanism, that the
origin of our of our country. George Washington, he was

(38:18):
a Mason and he was a part of the Episcopal Church.
You think he didn't You think that didn't seep into
the foundation of the church in America when they're bringing
over the Episcopal Church. Look at the the main funders
for the Washington National Cathedral all free Masonic backed individuals.
And then if you were to look at their seminary

(38:39):
in the Episcopal Church built literally right next to the
George Washington Masonic Monument. So, I mean, it doesn't take
a rocket scientist to piece these things together. I mean,
there's there's so much that we could talk about on
the geopolitical side of that. But I really do think
if you were to like set the Protestantism aside for

(39:01):
a practical for a practical piece, we look at the
Roman Catholicism aspect, They've got the same issues. They're embracing
the principles of the Enlightenment. The the Alt of Indida
was directed towards subverting the Roman Catholic Church, and basically
all of the objectives that were laid out the Alt
of Indida people can say like, oh, maybe it wasn't
a real you know, document or something. Dude, look at

(39:22):
the objections or the objectives that were laid out in
the text. Look at what the Roman Catholic Church is doing.
Now it's almost word for word what the game plan
was in the alt of Indida. I mean, if that
doesn't tell you, like set off some alarms in your head,
it should. And if you haven't read that text, go
read it, and then you can read other texts like
Operation Gladio, where you can see how the P two

(39:45):
Lodge get.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Right to say, yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's not
it's not.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
You know, it's so obvious once you've seen it.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
But yeah, go ahead, no, no, no, that's exactly what
I was going to just add to it was, you know,
Operation Gladio and Diaris covered this ad nauseum over on
his channel. Is the is the subversive elements that have
already infiltrated the church. I mean, you already have doctor
Taylor Marshall. I forget the name of his book, Insurrection
or something like that, I forget what you know what

(40:13):
I'm talking about, but his whole premise of his popular
book is saying that the Catholic Church is subverted from within,
and you know he struggles with set of accantism and
that type of stuff. But it's again, this isn't like
a conspiracy theory. You know, you bring up, you know,
the Lavender Mafia. You know, maybe some people roll their

(40:34):
eyes at that one, but Operation Gladio, the the ecumenist
Masonic elements inside the Catholic Church, Like just look at
what's going on. It's literally a playbook. It's it's all
falling into place right now. I mean, the Catholic Church
doesn't really stand in opposition to any globalist doctrine. And

(40:54):
I just saw Leo today and this is where this
is an important distinction that even within the Catholic or
within the Catholic Church, he's saying that the greatest threat
right now is Trump's deportation policies. Well, I'm all for
having a heart for all people, right, I can give

(41:15):
empathy and sympathy to everybody in their contexts and their plight.
That does not mean that first world nations need to
be unundated with third world people or second world people
or other first world people. It doesn't matter where they're
coming from. Is that we need to maintain our national homelands.
And so the Orthodox Church has the Russian Orthodox Church,
the Greek Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church. And so

(41:37):
this decentralized structure with national bishops that represent their jurisdictions
and their dioceses already kind of entails a patriotism and
an understanding of sovereignty and homeland. That the universalism of
the Catholic Church is totally consistent with this globalist agenda.
And that's why global warming, I mean, the only thing

(41:58):
they're good on is really a boor anymore.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And I think what you're talking
about is is the reason why practically the Orthodox Church
would be the only valid way going forward, because the concil,
your church government is the only thing that protects against
geopolitical subversion. Within the institution, it happens, but you can

(42:23):
isolate it to a certain jurisdiction, like I mean, can
we can get into attempted or successful geopolitical subversion within
the Orthodox Church itself, but it can be isolated to
a specific jurisdiction. So I mean that what you're saying
is absolutely true, and it's also kind of like it's
like a cheat sheet for dummies too, as far as

(42:44):
like who has authority over who? Look at the name
of the jurisdiction, right, it tells you who they have
authority over those within the jurisdiction.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Right.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
I see some Catholic apologists that are like, oh, it's
because he says ecumenical patriarch. It means he's the Orthodox pope.
Dude'stand dude I was talking to. I had to block
the guy I was talking to pope respector he just
he raged bates me. He's like, he'll say stuff that's
so like low i Q. I'm like, I have to
like address this right now. But I'm like, don't debate Ben,

(43:13):
It's okay. I'm just gonna block you for the sake
of my sanity.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
But he argued that the the ep is the has
a sort of papal position in the Orthodox Church similar
to the pope.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Yeah, yeah, what he said, he said, he said, uh,
you mean to tell me? What did he say? He said,
you mean to tell me you don't submit to the
or something? What did he say? What was the verbiage
he said? He said the ecumenical patriarch of the entire
Orthodox Church or something. Because he was trying to hold
me to some statement, uh, ecumenical Patriarch Bartholime he had made, Okay,

(43:47):
and I'm like, dude, like he's either very bad faith
or very uneducated on right.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Well, and I love how they tried to pin us.
You know, you know, God bless Patriarch Bartholomew. But obviously,
as a faithful Orthodox there's a lot of things that
not just me as some American convert, but many many
of the clergy that I personally know and speak to
are upset with things that he's doing. So, you know,
I'm not here to condemn hierarchs, but certainly it's just

(44:14):
known that Patriarch Bartholomew, and really the EP in Constantinople
has been tied with the CIA since Athenagorus the EP
before him. So I literally covered an article called the
CIA's Patriarch and it's about that, so that that has
been happening. But the Orthodox Church because of this decentralized structure, Okay,

(44:36):
so we have a we kind of have a corrupted, subversive,
globalist CIA affiliated EP right now, this is a nullify Orthodoxy,
right what? And so you see that all the time
by the Catholics, they try to the quote mine or
grab something, you know, the the EP says something that's
pro Zelenski Ukraine, which is a huge problem. Right, Okay,

(44:59):
what how does this prove Orthodoxy? Oh my god, the
Russian orthodox is you know fighting the Yeah, okay, what
what how does this nullify the church?

Speaker 2 (45:08):
I'm confused, right, yeah, I mean that's been that's been
something throughout church history though, where you know, either certain
patriarchs have been used for geopolitical you know whatever. I mean,
just look at I mean, the the the ecumenical patriarch
of Constantinople in the past has been a heretic. It's
been you know, uh, it's not something that is that's

(45:30):
new to church history. So we've had some of them
that have been deposed or you know, tried at ecumenical
council et cetera, so on and so forth. Even the
even the the Roman patriarch in some instances has been uh,
you know, tried at ecumenical councils, usually after the fact.
But this isn't something that's new. Church history is messy, right,

(45:51):
But that's why I'm saying the Conciliar Church governance is
ultimately kind of it's like the perfect safeguard, I think
from right, having the like I don't know, just from
a think about this, I'll like make it very simple.
Look at like your evangelical megachurch. Right, it's not hard
for one guy to get like honey potted or maybe

(46:13):
like blackmailed in some way, and then the institution is
corrupted and subverted. Now it's like, okay, maybe you're not
receiving the seven thousand a post like you know, like
some of the people were revealed. Uh, but you know
you're you're basically saying like you're gonna do my bidding
or I'm going to release the tapes or something, right, right, Like,
that's not difficult to do with one guy. Okay, Uh,

(46:35):
you might be able to do that with one guy
in the Orthodox Church, But then how are you going
to do that with the other patriarchs as well? How
are you gonna do that with every bishop? How are
you going to do that with you know, that's a
lot more work than saying I'm going to subvert the pope.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
You know, it's like that's not that's not that difficult.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Right, And they and I've heard the Catholics they think
that that somehow is deficiency of our ecclesiology, that we
don't have this this centralized power structure. We do. There's
just multiple of them. And the whole point is so that,
just like you said, because we don't believe that bishops
are infallible, because that's never been the case. I mean, so, yeah,

(47:12):
we don't believe in magic people, magic vickers that are
infallible when they speak from a certain chair. So yeah,
we've had a lot of bishops that were heretics and
did bad things, and that does not nullify the faith.
And even when I was on your stream, we had
a Catholic who was arguing that the Council of Florence
was the one they were upset with Saint Mark because

(47:36):
he didn't go along with it. But then's insinuating that
this showed that the Orthodox Church and the bishops have
no or go back on their word or something like that.
And my point to him was, no, the Council of
Florence didn't work because the people when the bishops came
back were so upset that they were willing to unite
with Rome due to political and military reasons. Obviously, the

(47:59):
Ottomans were recreeping, They're taken over Constantinople. But it's the people.
And so again I think for Catholics it's like they
can just go about and focus on their day to
day stuff and it's like, well, the pope and the cardinals,
they'll take care.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Of the church.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
And for us Orthodox it's like, no, it's the people
that live the faith that keep the church. The bishops
come and go, and some of them, you know, God willing,
it's not true, but you know the what's the saying
that the light posts lighting the way to Hell are
lit with the skulls of bishops or something like that.

(48:33):
Somebody knows the exact it's a bad paraphrase, something to
that effect. So we believe that our hierarchs can can
be fallible in many ways, and I think once people
realize that, actually, it's the laity that has the power.
And that's why it's important to be cnochized. That's why
it's important to understand what you're belonging to, because it's us,

(48:54):
the laity, that have really preserved it. Yes, the clergy
preserve the li church services and investments and some of
the higher forms of our worship, but in regards to
the actual faith not being changed, it has to do
with the people believing it and holding to it.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, I think the you're mentioning liturgy. I
think the liturgical argument for Orthodoxy is extremely strong, right,
I mean, you have a liturgy that you could literally
trace back to John Crassostom. Whereas look at the Roman
Catholic Church right now, they're they're like pushing the trads
out to the It's like, oh, we just found this
nice trad church. Actually it's getting closed. Okay, well we

(49:34):
just we moved to Tennessee so we could find another
nice trad church.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Actually, here's a message from the diocese. We're pushing all
of these too. They're going to become novsorto like you
knows or whatever. It just they keep they keep getting
shoved into the into the outskirts. And I mean I
respect a lot of the Trads, don't get me wrong,
Like the out of the Roman Catholics. I think the
Trads keep it real. Typically, they they will acknowledge the
issues within their own church. Like you mentioned Taylor Marshall,

(50:00):
I think he keeps it real with some of the
issues within his own church, avoiding Babylon Anthony. I like
him a lot too. Anthony Stein another good trad Obviously
we disagree theologically, but at least they're keeping it real
with some of the issues in their church. But back
to the liturgy, look at the Novis order. I mean
it's like what what what maybe fifty years old? Now, dude,

(50:23):
that's that's super super new. How are you defending against innovation?
You're not. You're just accepting it at this point.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
So yeah, no, that I think that is their tradition
is like incremental innovation. And you know Vatican Two wasn't incremental.
It was a massive change. But yeah, you know what
I want to I want to move the conversation in
another direction. But before I do, Nathan slippery through in
five says, what's this jazzy song that this lady sings?

(50:53):
It's a shout out to b Dive. So b dive
is an Orthodox brother who makes all the music. Uh,
some of it is Keenan beats on my channel, but
most of it is be dive and so he takes
samples and then adds beats to it. And he's also
did all my Orthodox chants. So look up be Dive
on SoundCloud. I think he's on Spotify and stuff like that.

(51:14):
If you and I have all his music on playlists.
So and I just wanted to tell everybody if you
want to support the stream, you have any questions for
me or Ben, feel free to send in questions or
comments using stream labs or Dono Chat, or if you
prefer to use YouTube, feel free to use YouTube. All
the proceeds are going to help get me to debate
con in Nashville. So we just moved and so my

(51:37):
wife and I are trying to get back on our feet.
So if you want to help us, raise some fund
so we can get to Nashville and we'll be doing
the Athens and Jerusalem Conference. I'll be giving a speech
with Dyer and FDA Father Vladimir Metropolitan Jonah the next weekend.
So we got a big two weeks Nashville and Florida.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
So those are what the proceeds go to. And just
want to let.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
Everybody know my box of books they just came in.
Sunday was the day that I received all of them.
So anybody who's purchased a signed copy of my book,
I will be sending those out this week later this week,
so you can expect it probably next week or late
this week for anybody, So I'll be going through the
first batches of those, So anybody who's wondering they haven't

(52:20):
heard from me in two weeks, been moving, books are
getting ready to come out, and I'll be doing a
stream tomorrow on what I would argue are the thirty
most important or essential arguments for Christian apologetics. And that
was going to lead into a discussion over at the
Logos Academy. It's our all men's academy over on school

(52:41):
dot com Logos Academy. We'll be doing at seven o'clock
pm tomorrow night, we'll be doing a think tank on
apologetics and at noon tomorrow I'll do a live stream
going over these thirty arguments. So anyways, just want to
keep you guys up to date on everything and let
you know about that. So feel free to get support
the stream sending questions for me and Ben and we'll

(53:03):
get to all of them. So the next thing that
I wanted to ask you about, so we've kind of
talked about Protestantism, everything kind of looking backwards a little
bit of speculation forwards, but you are kind of indicative
of a general trend in America right now, and me too,
So I converted in twenty nineteen. I first got exposed

(53:23):
to Orthodoxy in twenty eighteen, taking a PhD course on
the church history and theology that really weighed on me
for about six months until I stepped in foot stepped
foot inside of an Orthodox church. But really, since twenty twenty,
and I know you're familiar with all the data and statistics,
but Orthodoxy's seen a massive influx. I mean, I'm sure,
I know you've spoken to multiple clergy and so you

(53:44):
cannot speak to an Orthodox priest without them telling you
they have more catechumens than they've ever had before. My
question to you, as somebody who's converting but also has
kind of watched this phenomenon for the last five years
on the outside and doing apologetics against it, why do
you think Orthodoxy is becoming so successful in America? I mean,

(54:06):
and the trend is true in Western civilization generally, I
know Ireland and Germany, but in America, where we're at,
why do you think Americans are converting to Orthodoxy young
Americans at such a high rate.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
I think, really, I mean, there's a couple of different factors.
I do think online apologetics has a huge is a
huge reason people being forced to kind of pick apart
their own paradigm. A lot of the young men that
I speak to that have converted to Orthodoxy typically will
cite that it's because they heard some sort of like

(54:41):
apologetic work online. So I think that mission field Orthodox
really own that. To be honest, look at look at
the last four months of debates between Orthodox and Catholics.
I mean the Catholics are getting the floor like that there,
They're just getting wrecked right the Protestants typically. I mean
that was the whole reason I created a channel, was

(55:02):
because there weren't any Protestants doing it to like a
very professional degree. Maybe you had like some slot posters
that were like those are traditions of man, you're an idolator.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
You're not a James White fan. I was.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
I was never really I was never really a fan
of his debate style, to be honest, I thought respect
to him for being in the debate sphere for so long.
I just question how effective it really was. I think
there was like a I don't want to go too
far off topic, but there was like a like a
boomer apologetics time period, and like the early two thousands,

(55:39):
maybe nineties to early two thousands where it was misrepresentations
of like usually the Roman Catholic position because they weren't
really doing Orthodox debates at that time. But it would
be like they're resacrificing Jesus every mass, you know, like
that like kind of like completely misunderstanding Roman Catholic theology
for rhetoric points. That worked on the guys that were

(56:01):
cultural Roman Catholics and they ended up becoming Evangelical or whatever.
But that doesn't work anymore. People aren't people aren't taking
the slot. We're in the age of the internet now
where we can fact check your claims. So I think
the rise of Orthodoxy in America really, I think has
a lot to do with the online element, having so

(56:21):
many people involved in apologetics. Whether you say that's a
good thing or a bad thing, you can't deny the results,
and that's people coming to Orthodoxy. The other aspect, I
think is just disillusionment with the kind of Protestant experiment.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Right.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
You were saying, no Protestant nation is like truly Christian anymore,
and I completely agree with that. I think the ideas
of the Enlightenment they've failed, they've failed, they failed the West,
And you were saying if we really want to hit
that like old kind of like antiquated thing now for
maybe five or six years ago, return to tradition or whatever,
you know, like you really want to do that, you know,

(56:58):
you've got to become or Orthodox, and that's really the
only paradigm that's consistent, if.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
Not to leave it to be over nineteen fifties, like
some of those memes like return to tradition and show
like a white man, a white woman, like three kids,
a car, car, family house, and it's like, no, we
want that. But tradition goes way deeper than the nineteen fifties.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I think if we continue
the way that we're going, because I do feel like
there is a especially I mean, I don't want to
speaking ill of anybody, so I'm not mentioning anybody specifically,
so nobody get upset when I say this, But I
think there is like a knee jerk reaction amongst maybe
some of the older Orthodox to put the kebash on

(57:43):
the apologetic stuff. I think if you do that, you're
gonna you're gonna probably see your momentum slow down a bit.
You really do have to embrace the medium of the age.
Which is the Internet right now. We need people making edits.
We need we need that stuff everywhere. The edits need
to be out there, TikTok whatever you could think, they're
like low quality all you want. They work. We need

(58:04):
people with YouTube channels doing these debates. They need to
continue to do them. We can't stop doing the debates.
We need more and more and more qualified people interacting
in that type of way and addressing Protestant objections, addressing
Roman Catholic objections. But I think I think ultimately God's
doing the work right now anyway, and it's the water

(58:28):
is rising. It's becoming apparent, the flood waters a rising.
They need to get aboard the arc. It's becoming apparent
to many people. Look at all of the scandals, with
back to back to back scandals in the Roman Catholic Church.
Eventually we're going to see those Roman Catholics either I
mean fall away completely, you know, from Christianity, or become Orthodox.

(58:52):
You see the waters rising within Protestants. And we're just
talking about the Anglicans, right, I mean, they just elected
arch Bishop of Canterbury, which obviously is a subverted position
to become government elects it, but is a wo is
a woman that supports on a living babies. I mean,
it's it's present everywhere. Look at the the United Methodists, right,

(59:14):
they got like drag shows at their services.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Now.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Uh, they used to be relatively conservative. You can look
in the Lutheran Contacts. You can look at the a CNA.
The a CNA was very conservative. Now they ordain women.
There was a video of a guy that literally was
like an ACNA Anglican bishop ordaining his own wife and
they were doing the uh his wife was becoming a
priest and they were doing the vows and it was like,
do you vow to uh, you know, always submit to

(59:39):
the authority of the bishop. But she's like he, you know,
like my god, dude, Like the water's a rising man.
It's becoming obvious for so many people. Yeah, it's it's
gonna get really bad and then we're gonna see an
even bigger surge. This is like, this is like getting
in on bitcoin early. That's help put it, you know

(01:00:00):
what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Well, and I totally agree with you, and I think
that orthodoxy is such fertile ground and there's multiple reasons
I actually want to do is stream and sit down
and really systematize all the reasons why I think Orthodoxy
is so appealing. One is the feminization of Protestantism. So
it's a very emotional form of worship. I mean, even

(01:00:23):
you know the megachurches. The whole point is to get
you to a state of ecstasy. Not that that's explicitly feminine,
but to worship God in your emotions is a sort
of a feminine way to approach the divine. Not that
you can't be emotional, obviously, you can't have a true
mystical experience, but every time, so being your latte and
watching the rock band like, that's not it. And part

(01:00:48):
of it too, connects back with the ancestral thing that
we talked about, is I think that Orthodoxy gives young
men a true identity Protestantism does. I mean, I think
Charlie Kirk was really writing that wave of like young
white men in America finding this uh sort of general
American identity with their Protestant faith. But even Charlie saw

(01:01:10):
the shortcomings, and so his wife was Catholic, and as
we know now, for the last couple of months before
he was assassinated, was honestly inquiring into both Orthodoxy and
Catholicism because he saw the shortcomings of his own Protestant faith.
So there's a lack of identity in the in the West, right,
all these and I think even in Europe you can

(01:01:31):
see a difference between the Catholic nations and you know,
a Catholic in Croatia or a Catholic in a true
Catholic in Italy. It's very different than some Protestant in Sweden.
And so you can already see that these these traditional
differences are already you can already kind of see it
in the Christians in Europe. But in America, I mean,
what are what's the average Americans identity? And you become Orthodox,

(01:01:56):
now you have an identity, a religious identity, a historic identity, right.
I think for a lot of Americans, they don't realize
that we're not even three hundred years old. Guys like
this is a blink in historic time of what we
would consider America. And so there's a search for identity, authenticity,

(01:02:18):
and I think something challenging, right, Orthodoxy is not easy.
The whole point is that this is a lived faith
and so it's very demanding. The fasting is demanding, the
church services are demanding. We have a lot of services.
The prostrations are demanding for certain people. So we worship
with our whole body, and it requires a lot out

(01:02:39):
of you. And one of the interesting things that I
have a sociology text on religion where what their experiment
was was to look at different faith communities across the
United States and see why people stayed in certain ones
and left other ones. And what they found was communities
that were more demanding on people, meaning you needed to
show up, you needed to be here how to do this,

(01:03:01):
they stayed intact more where that were people who attended
faith communities mostly these were all Evangelical, Protestant in some
Catholic churches, ones that you just kind of showed up
and you were kind of nominally a part of the
community and maybe some people knew you, but you're not
really participating regularly. Those people tended to leave and apostatize.
And so because Orthodoxy demands so much for you to

(01:03:23):
actually belong to the church, I think there's a there's
another factor there that compels people to want to belong.
But I have I have a few other ideas too,
but I think Orthodoxy fulfills a lot of the problems
that have emerged in the Enlightenment project of the proto
Masonic America that we live in.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I do think it's a
once if you're coming if you're coming from it from
the outside, from especially from a Protestant perspective, it really
is a correction of some of those, like you said,
Masonic and Lightenment ideas, and those all ultimately the Enlightenment
project basically was instilling liberal ideas into society. So it

(01:04:11):
makes sense that the worship would become more feminized, as
you said, it makes sense that they would embrace more
even not so classical liberal ideas today. It's the it's
the logical endpoint of embracing that particular ideology, whether knowingly
or unknowingly. You know, there's a good book that was

(01:04:33):
recommended to me by Lawsky. Is a mystical theology at
the Orthodoxy church ur and every single piece of theology
is necessary and their effects downstream. If you remove in
a single piece, Orthodoxy is a complete it's a complete mosaic.
It's the entire thing. It's the fullness of the faith.
And you really don't understand that until you've adopted that framework.

(01:04:54):
And that really does flavor everything from being very involved
than the worship service, being very involved in the divine liturgy,
being involved in the life of the church, to the
way that you think about things and you don't even
realize that it's had that effect on you until you've
adopted the world view. So I think sometimes Protestants will

(01:05:15):
laugh at the idea of like, well, you just don't
have you don't have the orthodox phronima, Like you don't
have the you know, you don't even have the doctrine
of the news, Like how are you going to understand
these things? But that is actually very true, and it's
not just an intellectual acknowledgment either. There is a spiritual
component as well. But I completely agree with Laski about

(01:05:36):
you remove one piece, it's all downhill from there. We
already looked at the ramifications of removing the essence synergy
distinction from your eucharistic theology. It makes it not coherent
so kind of objective standards in an imputed Enlightenment philosophy

(01:05:57):
into your worship. Well we are today this is the
Western project, right, not what the West was meant to be.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
And that was one of the questions I got on
your channel was I think somebody was asking whether it's
Lawsky or Florowsky. I forget which theologian, but like, why
are they so critical of the West, Like I kind
of like Orthodoxy, but I hate when they bashed the West.
And my point was exactly what you're bringing up. They're
bringing up presuppositional differences that have shaped the intellectual trajectory

(01:06:25):
of the Western world. And what I argue in my
book is this delineation between the modern and the pre modern.
And I get this from Jannios Kristo's Janios, the Greek Theologian.
I don't know if you've read him. I'm I'm a fan.
I know Diyer's not much of a Hydigerian, so if
you're into phenomenology, he uses the continental approach to his

(01:06:49):
theology's much more Hydigarian. But he talks about how Orthodoxy
is a pre modern worldview and his critique, his major
critique of the West. Obviously you can get into Scolasticism
and all that stuff, but his is modernity itself. And
so modernity's built on democracy, scientism, technological progress, and so

(01:07:09):
you I think for the Protestants is Protestantism just doesn't
have a way out of the position we're in. And
I argue that transhumanism is the fulfillment of the modernity.
So even though most Protestants may not say I'm not
a transhumanist, I never get you know, the chip put
in my brain or whatever. The problem is, your presuppositions

(01:07:30):
are part of the same modernist world and I think
as time goes further and further, you're going to see
that more Protestants are going to become sympathetic to these things,
not because theologically they think they're great, but presuppositionally, they
don't have a way to demarcate and defend against it.
And so this mystical worldview, like when you're talking about

(01:07:51):
the Eucharist, you know, orthodoxy, one of the as Yanna
Ross points out, one of the central dimensions of a
pre modern worldview is that it's not fun focused on
rational definitions, and that is really part of the modernist project,
the Enlightenment project. And so by talking about, you know,
how did God become a human man? But we can

(01:08:12):
talk about the hyposthesesis, you know, the hypostass and and
the theological categories, but it's a mystery. I mean, we
can't rationally define how that we can't rationhly define how
the leaven, bread and the wine is the body and blood.
It's a mystery. And this is part of this pre
modern worldview, which is also monarchical. Right, So when you're

(01:08:32):
talking about I hope America becomes Orthodox. I've done a
lot of streams covering eschatology and like prophecies from Saint
Piecio's and some of the elders, and both Elder e
Fhram and Saint Piecios believe that when the Great World
War happened, so the Third World War, America is not
going to be bombarded by Chinese and Russian soldiers. What's

(01:08:54):
going to happen is we're gonna have an internal civil
war and there's going to be geological climatic event, could
be you know, who knows what it is, mate, Let's
say the volcano and Yellowstone erupts, which would be major.
That this is going to be the context that America
is going to experience. And they argue that anywhere between
seventy to as high as ninety percent of the population

(01:09:16):
may be affected or perish due to this. But they
say those that emerge on the other side orthodox, he's
going to thrive in America. This is why elder from
at the end of his life left Mount Athos to
found twenty monasteries in North America because he thought they
were going to be the harbingers of civilization, Christian civilization
once the collapse comes. And so I see that because

(01:09:41):
part of our eschatology as Orthodox Christians is that there's
going to be this great World war. We already see
the powers, you know, they've been talking about this for
centuries in the Orthodox Church, and we now see it America, Israel,
Western Europe, and then Russia, China, Iran or the Persians,
depending on how you want to categorize them. And when

(01:10:01):
this great World War takes place, it's going to cause
global devastation. But Orthodoxy is going to experience a golden
age because they argue that the Orthodox Gospel has not
reached every corner of the earth. Therefore the end, you know,
the Antichrist cannot come yet. And so Saint Payecio's talked about,
just like you mentioned, using technology to spread the Orthodox faith,

(01:10:24):
that technology is going to be used by the Antichrist.
So he was he was super critical of credit cards
when they came out in like the early nineties and
the use of all this stuff because money became digital,
money became tracked, and it could be centralized. But that
all leads to this idea that technology and Metropolitan Neophotoso

(01:10:45):
Morphu has been talking about this technology is going to
be the medium in which Orthodoxy is going to spread.
And so you talked about the debates in the last
what two three four months, and Orthodoxy is not even
one percent of the population, at least to the last consensus.
We don't know if officially how many Orthodox Christians are
in America since twenty twenty. Speculations range wildly, but we

(01:11:11):
do know that according to Alaskans, it's less than one
percent of the US population. But you look at online apologetics, Yeah,
oh my god. I mean, can you think of another
group that is totally punching above their you know, their
weight class with the amount of people we actually have
versus the efficacy of the debates and the dialogue that's happening.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
Yeah, for sure, I think it's I mean, I think
I think God's guiding it. To be honest, I think
that's absolutely right. And I know, talking about Patios, you know,
he's his prophecies, especially you're talking about the credit cards
and stuff. I mean, we're starting to see digital ID
come out. I'm like, ah, like, come on, you know,

(01:11:55):
I don't want it to be that suite, you know
what I mean with the UK is basically forcing that
on people, you know what I mean. Yeah, So, Lord
of Mercy, I hope, I hope it's not you know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
Later the twenty thirty UN agenda is digital currencies will
be in place globally by twenty thirty.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Yeah, Lord of Mercy. Yeah, I mean I think I
think that that really one of the things from the
Protestant perspective is like this kind of materialist approach to theology.
And I think one of the one of the issues
that many Protestants will come into when when they you know,
when they enter into the Orthodox Church or they begin

(01:12:36):
to I guess experience a life of the church would
be like interacting with things like this, like prophecies or
interacting with the lives of the saints and some of
the stories, uh, you know, the hagiography is there, and
uh and detailing I mean miraculous claims, prophecies, healings and
so on and so forth. But I think that is

(01:12:56):
I think it's a good. It's it is, if anything,
evidence that God is working within the church, if you were,
if you were to talk to I mean most most Protestants,
being like kind of foundationally brought up out of Enlightenment theology,
they kind of tend to be more of like skeptics,

(01:13:17):
Like they're and I'm talking not just like they're skeptical
about things, but they're like legitimately almost radical skeptics. Like
if you it's it's a branch from their epistemology having
kind of a broken foundation. You almost have to be
in order to bridge that gap and not experience some
form of cognitive dissonance. So I think a Protestant approaching

(01:13:40):
Orthodox theology might have some issues with I guess some
of the more spiritual aspects, but I feel like God
kind of bridges that gap for you as you live
the life of the church. You really do you really
do kind of need to have your news open in
order to accept some of the difference for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
Right, No, but you made it a good point. I
mean skepticism, Right, When when do skepticism emerge? And and
again it's part of the modernist mindset, and it's part
of this understanding that we need to become skeptical, you know, allah, David,
human we need to be total skeptics, right, so that
we can come to rational certainty of the things that
we can actually know. What can we actually know? And

(01:14:16):
therefore let's be ultimately skeptical about everything. But if that's,
like you said, a sort of fundamental presupposition that's never
really articulated because of the historic context these ideas emerge from,
well then you're already set on a trajectory where you're
going to like cognize and rationally apprehend everything. Well, how
the hell can you rationally apprehend sacraments?

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:14:38):
How can you cognize and rationally apprehend like eternal mysteries
that engage with you temporally? You can't.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
That's a good point because if you were to look
at the way that they've kind of tried to formulize
the Eucharist, it still doesn't work. Like even even with
Rome with their Aristotilian distinction, it's present and and you know,
et cetera. And then if you were to look at
the different iterations of consubstantiation, it's like, no, it's a
you know, is a local presence? Is it?

Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
You know, is it more of a spiritual thing? Is
it more of an ABC one? Do three? And we're
gonna compile all of these different formulations, and they still
miss the mark because they don't have the essence synergy distinction,
not a single one of them. So I think, I
think for me, it's kind of like God leaving clues,
or the or the true Churches. It's like, okay, if
you can pick this piece here, like that's that's almost

(01:15:28):
a direct thread, because the Orthodox Church is the only
church that has the essen synergy distinction. But you're you're
absolutely right about the Enlightenment theology, leading to skepticism, which
leads to more of a rationalist materialist trying to figure
everything out to like a very granular level, even to

(01:15:50):
try to, I guess, rationalize the essence of God in
some ways, How do you do that? How do you
rationalize the essence? Scripture says you look at my face,
you're gonna die, so good luck?

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
That exactly yeah. How do you how do you rationalize
the burning bush? How do you, I mean, how do
you rationalize the the mysteries and the miracles of Scripture itself?

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
It doesn't work. And so my my argument again in
my book and in my academic work, is that this
modern pre modern distinction is very real. And when you
look at modernity regarding how people are fleeing the the

(01:16:31):
failed promise of Western democracy, and when you look at
the left wing, you see like postmodernism, which again is
a fleeing from modernity, fleeing from the the central premise
of rationality and science and technological progress in democracy. I mean,
some of them are communists or whatever they think, they
are social utopians whatever. So you see that the postmodern leftists,

(01:16:54):
the radical leftists, are fleeing modernity. Then you see on
the far right all these wing now and white supremacists
that are moving towards paganism. Well, what is paganism is
a pre modern worldview as well. And then you see
the Christians that aren't Protestant or getting into Catholicism, they're
meming the Crusades. Well, the Crusades again is pre modern.
And so I feel like even this is not a

(01:17:16):
conscious thing that most people are thinking about. It's a
subtle thing that's subconscious that people are trying to find
an escape from modernity. Because you can feel the walls
are closing in, you know, the digital currencies being one
of them, right, And how do you escape this, Well,
you just become a wild leftist hedonist or it's like, no,
I'm actually like racial supremacist now, and I'm going to

(01:17:39):
return back to the pre Christian like pagan faith of
you know, Odin and Nordic paganism or something but orthodoxy.
And I even had during my defense of my dissertation,
so had I had a sociologist who is into psychedelics.
I had a Swedenborgian. I don't know, if you're familiar

(01:18:00):
with the manual swedenborg you never you ever heard of Swedenborgianism.
I mean yeah, it's like the most mystical form of
Protestant Christianity, right, Swedenborgs from Sweden was considered the most
intelligent anyways, So that was one of the scholars. And
then I had a Catholic philosopher and her work deals

(01:18:21):
with like neuroscience and concepts of personhood. And she's a
she's an expert in Aristotle so and she's a Tomas
So she teaches at the Dominican school. She's in the
Toomistic tradition. And when she read my work, and I
was bringing up so part of My argument is that
Orthodoxy is the only pre modern alternative for the Christian Faith.

(01:18:43):
You could argue the Orientals, but they're anyways Orthodoxy. Eastern
Orthodoxy is explicit and I even got her to concede
because she goes, well, I mean the Catholic Church you
could say is pre modern, and then I brought up well,
Vatican one, I mean, beginning with Glasticism, moving into Vatican one,
Vatican two. I don't think you can fully say that

(01:19:05):
the Catholic Church is pre modern anymore. It's very much
a modern institution. And even she being a devout Catholic
saying oh, yeah, I'd have to concede that. Yeah, I
would say Eastern Orthodoxy is probably the only one that's
still explicitly pre modern. And I think that there's something
there that is appealing to people again, like doing away
with the rational certainty and like wait, you're telling me

(01:19:26):
miracles are real. You're telling me like spiritual warfare is real,
Like weird shit's gonna happen to me when I try
to enter the church. It's like, yeah, dude, like this
is like all that shit's real, man, And if you
try to join, like you're going to see and that's
what we're that's what we're trying to bring you back to.
Is really you know, if orthodoxy, like the metaphor we
used earlier, is the sort of corrective to our ancestral trees,

(01:19:51):
moving back to a pre modern worldview is a correction
to our collective presuppositions, because again it gets back to
my anarchy. And and you know, there is no secularism, right.
Secularism is another pillar of modernity, the Enlightenment project. There
isn't any of that in the pre modern world. You
have religious kings and then if they're Orthodox, that are

(01:20:13):
overseen by the church. That's the way that government should work.
And so even now the meaning of the king or
the monarch is like very edgy, you know, edge lord
troll behavior. But I think there's a real yearning for
that from young people.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
Yeah, I think I think you hit the nail on
the head because that is kind of the that is
kind of all the old culture that you see popping up.
You're right, you're either going radical leftists or you're going
like all right, I'm posting like rial memes and like
blacks on edits, or you're going to become orthodox. You
know what I mean, that's that's really, that's really yeah.

(01:20:50):
Those are the three ways you can write a book
on that. The three ways you know done. It's either
radical leftist, I'm dying my hair pink, you know, I'm
like slicing myself open and like all this craziness. Or
you're posting blacks on edits and real memes. Or you're
becoming Orthodox.

Speaker 1 (01:21:06):
Yeah you worship Odin invert your penis into a vagina,
or you should become Orthodox, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
That's right. Yeah, and that that'll be that'll be the
mad Max world in the future. It's just those three
factions fighting against each.

Speaker 1 (01:21:20):
Other, right well, and you already see it. I mean,
so Zionism you know that's dead. I mean right now
it has a stranglehold because the Trump administration and you know,
the political lobbies. But as I know, you know, you
look at the polling, it's it's over. Like it doesn't
matter right, left center, it does not matter. Basically, in

(01:21:41):
twenty to thirty years, there'll be ten to fifteen percent
of the population that's Zionis, right, right, and that's in America,
the most Zionis nation on earth, so outside Israel that
is so there's there's serious change that's happening and me

(01:22:02):
dealing with You know, my methodology is like intellectual history,
So I'm always looking at things like super zoomed out,
looking at like how ideas and concepts and cultures change
over long periods of time. I think this modern pre
modern thing. Not many people are talking in that way,
but even like, are are you familiar with like Curtis Jarvin?

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
No, Okay, Minch's molblug. Anyway, he's kind of a political
theorist on the alt right, and he's from Silicon Valley.
He's kind of tied in with the Silicon Valley elite.
But he even talks about how, just based on his
perspective of efficiency corporate efficiency, that Apple or major corporations
run like a monarchy and because of the way the

(01:22:43):
power is just distributed, and he argues, well, then that's
where our government should be. We should return back to
some monarchy. So he's a Silicon Valley Jewish kind of
intellectual who is in favor of promoting monarchy or return
back to monarchy. And again my argument was is why
that's appealing because if you in some of the alt

(01:23:04):
right circles, he's very, very popular. So he's actually a
big name. If you said Curtis Arvin Peler, Oh yeah, dude,
I've read all this stuff because he had like a
blog is kind of a pseudonym mensious mobug. But even
that is an upfront to democracy, right. That is part
of this in how many Protestants could you get to say, yeah,

(01:23:25):
you know, I'm not really I don't really believe in
democracy or even a republic for that much. You know,
people always say, well, we're a republic, We're not a democracy, okay,
either one. I think it's almost baked into American Protestantism,
mainline evangelical, Pentecostal. It doesn't matter how many of them

(01:23:46):
are like anti democracy as a political orientation. I don't
know many, right, right.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
Yeah, No, I agree. I think I think that is
something certainly to think about. I think the only thing
that I would think about, like if we were to
practically move to a monarchical system like that, would be
you would almost have to have some form of conciliarity
to it as a safeguard because, as we were talking
about earlier, it's not too difficult to subvert one individual,

(01:24:17):
you know, So if you had, like you said, like
you know, the bishops guiding the monarch, and he's kind
of more of like a you were to look at
it as like a first among equals kind of thing,
like this is the civil arm, and then this would
be like the theological arm, and they're like the advisors.
That could probably work. You would just need safeguards to

(01:24:37):
prevent subversion foreigner domestic upon the one individual at the head.
That would be my only concern practically moving into a
system like that, because you see it. You see it
even within the evangelical context and even within the Roman
Catholic Church on context. Like I said, it's not difficult
to subvert one guy. You can find something, you know
what I mean. Absolutely, Like imagine if tomorrow I got

(01:25:02):
whisked off to some black site because somebody didn't like
what I said online, and they took over my Twitter
account they started posting whatever they wanted. That wouldn't be
an issue. That'd be very easy to do. Or maybe
they have some kind of like data collection or something.
They pull up something you said when you're sixteen, and
it's damaging enough that they could use that against you. Well,
now you're indebted to these people, and you kind of
got to do whatever they tell you. So one guy

(01:25:24):
being kind of put to the screws like that super easy.
A group of people concilier governance maybe not so much.
Does that mean that the democratic system is correct? I
don't particularly think so. I think that I think that
project's kind of failed.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
Right. No, And just to be clear, me, as an
Orthodox Christian who would be pro monarchy, I do not
see that happening in America, and the only instance, and
it would be efficacious because I've even heard Catholics some
of well I've saw at least maybe I don't mean
to be pejorative, but it appear to be like Roiper's

(01:26:03):
followers of fintests who are Catholic, who were in favor
of monarchy and saying, well, we need to you know,
we just need the ten percent rule and then we
can take over and then we can institute like a
Catholic monarchy. And then, me, as an Orthodox Christian getting
back to the Council of Florence, my point would be, well,
wait the whole the only way that would work is
if the majority of the US are Catholic, right, So

(01:26:26):
it have to go from the ground up. And so
just like you're talking about somebody being corrupted, like you,
if you have a nation that only is ten percent
Orthodox and you have an Orthodox king and monarch, like,
how's that going to work? That just doesn't. That doesn't fly,
so at least from my hopes, in an ideal situation,
if the collapse of the United States were to happen,

(01:26:48):
which I'm not advocating for because that's going to make
my life a lot more difficulty doing streams like this
a lot more difficult. But if it is as many
prophecies have speculated, moving into the future, it would take
essentially a real reset, not the great reset of the
WEF but a real reset, a cultural reset, or maybe
a large swath of our population unfortunately perishes through various circumstances.

(01:27:12):
But those who emerge, as Elder Ephraim believed that he
saw in a dream, were going to be devout Orthodox
Christians with large families. Well, imagine America that's half the
size in the future, that is seventy five percent Orthodox Christian.
Now getting the church to oversee and then finding somebody
who emerges as an ideal monarch from that population. To me,

(01:27:35):
that's how that would occur. So I disagree with some
of the Catholics that I've seen in the America first
move though, I have much sympathies with some of the
policies and the things that they're upset about have more
overlap than disagreements, but a strong disagreements idea that we
should just seize powers like traditional Christians and then enforce
that on everybody, and somehow that's going to work. I

(01:27:56):
just don't see how that can be the case.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
You mentioned the gropers. I made a joke today because
I made two posts right, and I was like the
first one was like like you know, how I how
I feel? Wesley huff unfollowed me or whatever on like
a joke and I'm like, I'm like, uh, you know,
like the Ryan Gossling name. I did another one. I
was like, how I feel, like, like, oh now I
woke up this morning. Gavin Ortland unfollowed me. I'm like

(01:28:19):
it's over. You know, I did like a name or whatever.
I messaged. I messaged Mario and Luigi. I was like,
I should do it like a joke. One next it's
like it's like, oh, like, how could things get worse?
Schitzo Groper unfollowed me, like, what do I do now,
you know, like like you know, they always have the
craziest username. It's like, you know, you know whatever whatever Groeper.

(01:28:41):
I was like, just like pick the craziest one. Oh no,
this guy unfollowed me, it's over.

Speaker 1 (01:28:46):
That would be funny. So Wes huff unfollowed you. He's
been pretty outspoken against orthanoxy. So you think he's upset
because you converted or something, or doesn't see you as
a fellow Protestant apologist.

Speaker 2 (01:28:59):
I don't know. I can only speculate.

Speaker 1 (01:29:01):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
Well, obviously I'm not a fellow of Protestant apologist. But
I think the reason he followed me was because I
had good arguments and then from his perspective at least,
and those are no longer there, So the purpose of
him following my page isn't there anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:29:14):
So have you seen some of his recent critiques of Orthodoxy?
What are your thoughts to those?

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
Oh? Well, I mean they've kind of already been addressed
a little bit, but he posted the most recent one
was you've alreaded barrel age Faith did a response video.
Oh okay, I was checking that out today and I
thought it was pretty straightforward. He was kind of like
conflating faith and works and stuff. And he was saying,
you know, you're it's like nothing that hasn't been said before,

(01:29:41):
your typical like evangelical talking points. They could be saved,
but it's despite their traditions. These are traditions are man
kind of deal. That's basically what he said. He was like,
this is faith plus works. You know you're adding onto
it like any He said the thing like anytime you
say Jesus plus, then you don't have the Gospel anymore.
You say, hey, Jesus plus, then you don't have the

(01:30:01):
Gospel anymore. So from an apologetic standpoint, that's not too
difficult to knock down, right, I mean, I I don't
want to speak like west Off. God bless him. If
he was ever interested into orthodoxy, Dude, you could DM me.
I won't tell a single soul, and I don't. I
don't And that goes for any person I've worked with

(01:30:22):
in the past, if you're a big name Protestant or whatever,
I'm not going to tell a single soul. I'm just
I'm meming at this point, like oh, he unfollowed me,
Like it's over, this is a Twitter unfollow I'm being persecuted.
Don't you understand this, you know, like that's such a joke.
But on a serious level though, if any of you
guys that are Protestant apologies for big name guys you're interested,

(01:30:44):
I won't tell a soul you can reach out, you.

Speaker 1 (01:30:46):
Know, yeah, I mean for somebody, because obviously you were
very much interested in history that Cleve dow antiquity YouTube channel,
and Wes huff is so interested in like textual archaeology
and looking at the historicity of the Church and scripture.
I'm just kind of blown away by some of his

(01:31:07):
low tier arguments against orthodoxy. And it could just be
out of ignorance, you know, to give him credit. Maybe
it's just he hasn't looked into these things and so
he makes an argument that he thinks is accurate. But
just to your point, some of the stuff I've seen
is like really kind of basic, like you'd get from
you know, Billy Bob pastor at the church, and for

(01:31:29):
somebody who's an academic. You know. One of the things
I always try to do is I want to steal man.
So whoever I argue against, I want to be able
to state their position where they'll be like, yeah, that's
what I believe. Okay, now we can move forward. And
the straw manning of Orthodoxy, the way that he presents
it is like, bro, what I think.

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
I think he genuinely doesn't know, though I don't. I
don't think that's malicious. I think it genuinely doesn't know
what the actual position is. He's He's a smart enough God.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
I think he is a smart guy's articulate.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
I think eventually if he were, because this is the
thing there is that there's an intellectual aspect, but there's
also a spiritual aspect. So he'll get the information eventually.
It's whether or not his news is going to be open,
and he'll follow that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:16):
Right, you can.

Speaker 2 (01:32:17):
You can grieve the spirit. I know I did at
one point, Lord, have mercy on me. I was beginning
to kind of have some cracks in the armor. And
I had a conversation with my senior pastor a while
ago and I was like, hmm, you know, do I
feel like I should, you know, become Orthodox. I went
to a church service once with a friend of mine

(01:32:37):
who was a Greek Orthodox church and we went once
and then I was like, m they said the word mediatrix,
Like I understand a little bit of Greek. I'm like,
I have some issues with that particular doctrine. So I'm
like that allowed me to shut off my They said
media trix, I'm out, you know, like like that. I
don't like that at all, So I set that aside.

(01:32:59):
I felt like super spiritually dry like ever since that
point moving forward until eventually I finally accepted the call
and you know, to seek into the church. But I
think it depends is is he going to be obedient
to that call when and if that happens to him,
because he won't get the information at some point. Is

(01:33:22):
that spiritual awakening going to happen, because that's necessary. You
can have it all, but are you going to are
you going to accept it? Is it going to be enlightened?

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
Yeah, God willing he does. I think, you know, it'd
be great if he became Orthodox, he'd be great, and
especially with his expertise and arguing for our tradition if
if so, he chose or fully understood it. And so
hopefully that's the case. But you know, on the other
end of that, people who are ignorant, is like you

(01:33:51):
have the Jordan Peterson phenomenon where he wears your tradition
as a suit jacket. I don't know if you've seen
like all the he has, Like he'll have jackets covered
in icons and Orthodox symbolism like a schema jacket. And
so curious what your thoughts are about Peterson because for
so many, especially through that twenty sixteen twenty seventeen first

(01:34:16):
era phenomenon of Peterson when he first goes on Rogan,
he was a huge bridge with some of his biblical
commentary and getting people to think, well, really he was
a bridge to Pagio, which was a bridge for people
to get into Orthodoxy. And I found Pagio through Peterson,
and I was I found Orthodoxy through studies, but then
Paggio kind of confirmed and got me more interested. And

(01:34:39):
so I'm curious what your kind of thoughts are about
Peterson because when he came back from the Benzo addiction,
he looked like he was getting ready to become Christian,
Like actually say I believe in God, right, actually say
that Jesus Christ is God because his whole I mean,
his whole corpus for like four years is talking about
Christ but using you know, uni and archetypes and symbolism

(01:35:02):
to articulate what we believe, and some of it is true,
but it's you know, truth has multiple levels of meaning,
and the literal is still there even though you can
grab all these symbolic archetypes. And so I remember an
interview he did with Pagio and he came back from
the Benzos and he's crying and and Paggio is just saying, yeah,
it's real, you know, it's real, talking about Christ and

(01:35:24):
the Church. And yet then we fast forward to his
sort of second reawakening where he kind of about a
year later that emerges back on the scene and has
Peterson Academy and he joins the Daily Wire, and then
on the Jubilee interview, he explicitly states that he's not Christian,
which I think dumbfounded some of the because, let's just

(01:35:45):
face it, a lot more Protestants, I mean, I think
Orthodox and some Catholics are much more critical of Peterson
because of his presentation of Christianity. But I've seen a
lot of Christian pastors use Peterson for pedagogical purposes regarding
their their communities. And now it's you know, he apparently
he's having a health crisis according to his daughter, but

(01:36:07):
he's in the last what was that two months ago
literally said no, I'm not Christian. I've never said I'm Christian,
And did you believe when he was pushed again? What
are your thoughts on the Jordan Peterson phenomenon.

Speaker 2 (01:36:19):
Well, I mean, I think I think Peterson was He's
He was a very good kind of entry point for
many people into thinking about some of these concepts like
self deprivation. You know, you gotta you gotta make, you
gotta make your bed, you gotta clean up your own
you know what I mean? Like that, like that, that
kind of rhetoric I think was really needed for people

(01:36:40):
that were dejected. I mean, he had a very specific
target audience, which was disillusioned, you know, young men, uh
that really felt like they didn't have a I mean,
because this was what like COVID COVID era, basically people
were going not so I don't like people forget how
crazy the culture was at that time. So I think

(01:37:02):
he was a much needed voice during that time period.
Maybe he didn't go as far as some of us
would have liked him to go, but I think ultimately,
like you mentioned, with his health crisis right now, this
is the time every single orthodox watching the stream, every
single orthodox out there needs to be praying for him,

(01:37:22):
because when you go through a severe health crisis, you're
face to face with God at that time. I remember
when I had cancer. That was like, you know, probably
one of the most well, probably the closest it was
up until that point in my life. That was the
closest I was I felt with God because I had

(01:37:43):
nothing else to lean on. I had to lean on.

Speaker 1 (01:37:45):
What kind of cancer were you diagnosed with.

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):
A cancer in a sensitive area? I'll just I had
testicular cancer.

Speaker 1 (01:37:51):
Okay, So so sorry, I didn't know if you I
didn't mean okay, because if you've already said it publicly, then.

Speaker 2 (01:37:59):
Lance Lance Armstrong testicular cancer basically.

Speaker 1 (01:38:02):
But yeah, it was.

Speaker 2 (01:38:04):
It was rough for me because you know, sometimes it's
like an easy thing or whatever. But they were talking
about I had like a rare aggressive form of it.
They were going to take my lymph notes from like
my neck down, like every single lymph notes, and uh,
they were saying, if you don't do this, there's a
percentage it'll come back, you'll get lymphoma, and you're dead.
So I was like, well, you know what, I don't

(01:38:24):
feel like I don't feel like living the rest of
my life like test tube gub gub snail man, you know,
like that would be terrible. So I just I don't know.
I leaned on I leaned on God during that time,
and Praise God. This is the.

Speaker 1 (01:38:38):
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:38:39):
I think I only have one more one more remission
appointment like check up, and I'm done. And then it's
like you're, you know, no more, no more checkups necessary,
You're basically you're good to go. So I mean, I
don't know. Through that time, it's you're given time to repent,
You're given time to really focus on God. And you know,

(01:39:00):
I'm sure a similar thing is happening with JP right now.
So everybody just needs to pray that that's efficacious and
we're all called. We just have to answer the call,
right so, you know, and also keep keep you know,
my wife in prayer because you know, she's got to
go get a biopsy soon too.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
So oh, I'm sorry to hear.

Speaker 2 (01:39:19):
That, guys.

Speaker 1 (01:39:23):
Interesting, Well, yeah, I think that Peterson, you know, he
was beneficial for me. And it felt like after that
first Benzo and his trip to Russia and coming back
that that's when his wife because she also had a
very serious illness during that time she became she reverted
back to her Catholic faith. I think MICHAELA is some
form of Protestant now, And so when he came back,

(01:39:46):
it looked like that's that phenomenon where you kind of
hit rock bottom and then you find solace in Christ
and God, and then he becomes a new foundation for
you to build on. It seemed like that was going
to happen. And then for what twenty thirteen or twenty
twenty three, twenty twenty four, he's wearing all this Orthodox
stuff and he's presenting himself as some type of authority

(01:40:10):
on Orthodoxy or at least Christianity, and using Orthodoxy as
some type of sheep's clothing. And I know people that
are close friends that interact with Peterson, and I even
brought that up to them in private messages, and he's like, well,
I get it. I feel kind of awkward with it too,
being an Orthodox. But he's on the journey. He's coming,

(01:40:31):
like just be patient with him. And then to see
the jubilee thing, Like it was probably nine months or
ten months after I talked with the guy and say
and see that he's explicitly saying he's not Christian, and
that was kind of a resurgence of his fame and popularity.
So maybe to the point that you're making this sort
of you know, kind of being undercut by this new illness, Well,

(01:40:53):
hopefully he finds that that newfound faith and to me
his heroes, because he loves archetype. So if you're going
to use Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, the hero's journey for
Jordan Peterson is for him to become a pro proselytize
Jesus Christ, not as a symbol for speaking truth, but
as a real incarnate God who took on human form

(01:41:15):
as as your savior. And I think if he did that,
it would the grace would seep through all his teachings
and there'd be a new profundity, there'd be a new
importance to it, and you can then see his his
journey and maturation. But my experience in academia is that
it's very difficult for people who are really intellectually sophisticated

(01:41:36):
to submit to the church as an authoritative epistemology over
your own.

Speaker 2 (01:41:43):
If that makes sense, Yeah, I think that's definitely a
roadblock for sure. And I think also having a public
platform can be a bit of a roadblock as well.
But everybody's walk is different. Like, we don't know, we
don't know his intention behind what he was doing or
how he was presenting himself. He could have been genuinely,

(01:42:06):
genuinely seeking and maybe he didn't have all the pieces there,
or maybe he would seek and then he would find
something else. And he's like, my framework has a gap.
You know, I have to I have to reconcile this somehow.
Whereas within within orthodoxy, it's not like you can't, like
you're talking about coming from an academic background. You are
almost intrinsically approaching this from a materialist skeptic position. So

(01:42:29):
interacting with the claims of like the miracles of the saints, right,
you're gonna you're gonna have Oh what do I have
to figure out and have epistemic certainty that those are
one hundred percent true? How do I prove epistemologically a miracle?
How do I how do I lay that?

Speaker 1 (01:42:44):
By definition? It violates natural I guess natural law, natural
natural observation. I guess that's what science is built. Yeah,
so by definition, a miracle already nullifies rational epistemologic certainty.

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):
Yeah, I think those are probably things that he's struggled with.
I mean, obviously I don't know the guy, but I'm
just thinking if somebody coming from an academic background, those
would be things I could see them, see them grapple with,
and maybe you become more and more convinced, and then
you come up with now there's another thing. Now there's
this other threat I have to untangle. And you know,
if you're not fully committed at that point, I could

(01:43:21):
see you kind of going back and forth a bit.
But with people with people like that, sometimes you know,
a near brush near brush with uh, you know, your
own mortality can be something that causes some of those
things to become secondary when that's at the forefront of
your mind. Because I think a lot of us we

(01:43:44):
think at a very basic level the result we're going
to have another day, like we're going to be here tomorrow.
I can figure this out in the future, so let
me put off this, right, They put off this decision
until later. And again I'm not the guy, so I
don't know. But normally, as somebody who was an associate
path or as somebody who worked in pastoral ministry, I
never like was at somebody's deathbed and heard them say

(01:44:06):
like anything other than like you know, trying to be
reconciled to God or you know, regret for the things
that they didn't do in their life, like spend more
time with their kids or whatever. Like there's always some
kind of like moral regret typically unless you know you
lived a pretty solid Christian life in which you're like,

(01:44:27):
I'm ready to go home kind of you know what
I mean, Like I've ran into some of that as well,
But yeah, I don't know. I think with Peterson, this
is probably going to be this will be something that
brings him closer, closer, closer to God and closer to
that decision if he's not already there at this point.

(01:44:48):
And I think something that we need to take into
account too for even the bigger name like say Protestant
figures out there, that maybe a lot of Orthodox are
upset with a lot of these guys are grappling with
the truth too. You never know, if you know, another
person similar to my position ends up coming across the aisle.
Now that doesn't mean go easy on the guys. I'm
not saying that, but I'm saying understand that each person

(01:45:11):
is on their on their path to the answer of
this question in a specific way. So I think you
need people we're talking about the approach of how orthodoxy grows.
You need people who have that direct, aggressive approach, right,
because that's helpful, that breaks down the paradigm. But you
also need people holding the net like, hey, I'll receive

(01:45:32):
you gracefully. I'm going to I'm going to welcome you
in with with loving arms and not tell anybody you
know that you're you're going through. Especially if you're like
a public figure and you're inquiring, like you have to
be able to have some level of trust. It's like, Okay,
are you going to ruin my entire career by me
confiding in you or something? You know, we're asking you
a question. So those are all things of people with

(01:45:53):
a public platform. I think grapple with in the background
that a lot of the kind of like like people
watching from the sidelines maybe don't see, and then grappling
with that in real time take on the extra layers
for jp academic background, that that just makes things way
way harder.

Speaker 1 (01:46:10):
Right, last question and then we just have a few
super chats. We'll get out of here. I appreciate you
giving me at the time. My god, this dude just
did a stream at Gym Bob before he hopped on,
so he's been sitting in that chair for at least
four to five hours.

Speaker 2 (01:46:25):
Rock on, let's go.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
My last question for you is seeing some of the
Protestant reaction to this phenomenon in regards to people coming
into Orthodoxy. Gentleman. I believe his name is Joel Webbin,
and he's a Protestant pastor, and I believe he's in Texas,
and I covered a video he did trying to prevent

(01:46:47):
Protestants from going to Orthodoxy, and it sounded like he
was just upset with Father Mosic McPherson. So he's a
like strong man competitor and lifts weights and and kind
of has a Joe masculine vibe as a priest. You know,
a lot of the Orthodox priest online, they have a
different vibe. You know, Father Father Cyprian has a different

(01:47:10):
vibe than Father Josiah or Father Moses or Father Turbo.
And so it's cool, each one kind of has their
own way of communicating. But Webin was basically amounting the
conversion to Orthodoxy as just an aesthetic appeal to masculinity
that was basically most of his argument dwindled down to that.

(01:47:30):
I'm sure his criticisms of Orthodoxy regarding icons and the
theotega is probably normally Protestant Reformed stuff. But Webin is
very outspoken against Zionism, so he's not a dispensationalist. He's
very I don't know, I've never heard him address secularism explicitly,
but he identifies as a Christian nationalist, so maybe he's

(01:47:54):
already moving against secularism. And maybe it's not explicit but
in some way kind of of And so I think
I saw Gavin Ortland, even though he was just at
Father Josiah Trinham's parish and Riverside for the marriage conference.
I think he did a video like a week or
two ago criticizing why so many people were coming to

(01:48:15):
the Orthodox Church. What are your what are your thoughts
on these prominent apologists or somebody like Webin who has
a faith community of his own that he leads and
is trying to appeal to young men to say, hey, guys,
stop leaving Protestantism, like we can be based in cool too.

(01:48:37):
What are your thoughts on this phenomenon? Generally speaking?

Speaker 2 (01:48:40):
Yeah, I think with I mean with Webin. I think
I might have some unique insights. He he posted a
while ago. I don't remember exactly when, I'm horrible at
the time what he had posted something like or he
was talking about this. He said that he was having
issues reconciling Christian nationalism with the Baptist movement because Baptists
are basically by creed. Most Baptists are pacifists. So if

(01:49:06):
you were to become a Christian nationalist, obviously there has
to be some sort of threat of force in order
to enforce literally any law. You can't have a pastifist state.
So he was trying to reconcile being a Baptist with
the Christian nationalist movement. And he said, you know, he
was having a tough time doing that. And he said, eventually,

(01:49:27):
if he said for the time being, this was his verbiage.
He said, for the time being, I can remain Baptist
without too much strain on my conscience. So that's what
he said. So he's fighting with something, right, he says,
without too much strain on my conscious He said, eventually,
if there came a time, I may have to jump

(01:49:48):
the shark. That was just what he didn't get very specific.
But my guess is because he's done a lot of
collaborations with Roman Catholics, is that's the position he's moving into.
If I had to make a I would say, Joel
Webbin is going to become a Roman Catholic. He's done
collaborations with I believe, I mean, just name named your

(01:50:09):
big name Roman Catholic channel. So I think that's the
direction he's going in. Because he used the language jump
the shark. He didn't say like I was gonna have
to cross a tiger. He wasn't being specific, but he
was addressing and lamenting some of the some of the
short sightedness of the Baptist movement in relation to Christian nationalism.
And I think he's more. Maybe he's more he likes

(01:50:34):
the monarchical system, like the like Groyper kind of idealized
version of it, like a Catholic state. So I think
that may be the direction. You see, he hasn't been
that explicit with it, but that's where I could see
if I was going to speculate, I would see him
going in that direction. With the Gavin Ortland thing, that's
something completely different. Oh, let me let me address his

(01:50:55):
comments on orthodoxy. I think that art and parcel with
where he's drifting.

Speaker 1 (01:51:00):
In my mind, which one's he or Land or Webin Webin.

Speaker 2 (01:51:03):
So we're talking about Webin. I think it's part and
parcel of where he's drifting potentially over to over to Rome.
And if he is drifting in that direction, I think
maybe he sees the Orthodox as a bit of a
threat to his his changing worldview. And if it's and
if it's not, if he's not there yet, because you
don't know, everybody's walk is completely different. That could have

(01:51:24):
been like a like he feels in the moment like
this was like a moment of weakness. Maybe I shouldn't
have said or whatever. Maybe he's just feeling frustrated with
the weakness of the Evangelical movement and Baptists in general.
I think eventually we'll see that change from him. So
this is uh, this is natural to that progression because
to be Roman Catholic typically is to be anti Orthodox.

Speaker 1 (01:51:46):
I thought he would be in favor of like an
American Anglican version, like an American explicitly American Protestant church,
like a Universal American Church or something. But what you're
saying makes sense. Going just going to back to Rome. Yeah,
and it it maintains the Western identity. I think that's
a big hang up for a lot of people, is like,

(01:52:08):
I don't I'm not Eastern. I'm you know, my heritage
is German or my heritage is Northern European. I don't
want to be Eastern.

Speaker 2 (01:52:16):
Yeah, I mean, what are your thoughts on? Like, well,
I'll save that, but I want to get into the
Gavin thing. His his orthodox response thing was a response
to my conversion. So that was that. That was that
video that was responding to my conversion. And then he
posted something posted something about backing like talking, trying to

(01:52:38):
break down icon veneration as like an apostolic teaching. But
I think I think a lot of that is in
response to me leaving the Protestant camp. And in that
same video, towards the end he had mentioned and I
mean all respect to Gavin, you know, much much love
to the guy. You know, I would still consider us friends.
We haven't had too much of an in depth conversation
since then. He did reach out to me when I

(01:52:59):
when I was I made the announcement, he said, hey, man,
you know I'm here if you ever want to chat,
you know, love you dude, God bless or whatever. And
I was like, hey, thanks, you know, I appreciate that.
So he's being a class act. But then unfollowed me
on Twitter and you know, like started attacking Orthodoxy. So
you know, but I think that's natural. I think that's
a natural thing. You see, you know, one of your
guys that you you know, you viewed maybe as a

(01:53:21):
you know, colleague or somebody who is helping the movement
or whatever. The way, now they're now they've now they've
left and there they've gone this other direction. That's a
you know, that's a threat. That's a threat to what
you're trying to accomplish, which is to ease the conscience.
Because that's his that's his you know, his view, ease
the conscience of people with ecclesial anxiety. That's the way
he brands it, ecclesial anxiety. So they have anxiety over

(01:53:44):
the one True Church claims. So the purpose of the
Channel Truth Unites ultimately is to ease the conscience. Uh,
you know, remain evangelical or remain Protestant. I don't really
care which flavor of Protestant you're going to be, but
remain where you're at. Do not follow the impulse that
you're getting from the anxiety, from the cognitive distance that
we're facing.

Speaker 1 (01:54:03):
And I think the houses on fire, but do not panic.

Speaker 2 (01:54:07):
Yeah, I think that is That is kind of part
of it though, And and the people that are dealing
with ecclesial anxiety, there's a reason for that. I mean,
I've never I've never really dealt with it. I didn't
the one true church claims was never like a factor.
Maybe maybe the truth of the anathemas and the consistency
of the first millennium logically makes sense, and that's what's

(01:54:30):
convincing to me. But I've never been swayed by like emotionalism,
like oh am, I gonna be saved, you know, Like
that's not that's never been a factor for me. But many,
for many Protestants, that is that is the case. They're like,
there's these churches that have exclusivity claim So how do
I know, you know, because within the Protestant mindset, like
I said earlier, it's I'm checking my fruits consistently, I'm

(01:54:53):
checking to make sure I'm good consistently. I'm checking my fruits.
Is my you know, do I have genuine faith. It's
like kind of the constant kind of like pocket watching
yourself and in the that's what's built in. That's the mindset.
It's not medicinal. It's a pocket watch like it's I'm
checking myself. I'm checking myself. I'm checking myself. That's why
you get like puritanism. That's why you get like the

(01:55:15):
kind of like you know, no dancing or no you know,
don't drink alcohol or you know, whatever the case may be.
That's an out that's an outgrowth from that mindset. But anyway,
with the ecclesial anxiety thing, my message to the people
that are suffering from that would be, there's a reason
for that. That's cognitive dissonance. You need to follow where
that goes. How do you know that's not God telling

(01:55:38):
you that you need to move right and you're just
stifling the Holy Spirit, You're greaving the Holy Spirit. You
don't want to be in a position where you're doing that.
So I would say, if you're if you're dealing with
ecclesial anxiety or whatever the case may be, take that
as a as a kind of like an alarm to
go and reevaluate your worldview. Why is your world view

(01:56:00):
causing you anxiety. There's a reason for that, right and
we were talking about Loski's mystical theology. That piece right there,
that solo feed a piece right there that is the
precursor to having ecclesial anxiety to begin with. So if
you didn't have that, if you didn't have this false
idea of we're talking about a humanism, we talking about

(01:56:21):
branch theory, if you didn't have these false ideas baked
into your worldview, then something coming in and challenging that
causes you anxiety, that tells you there's a deficiency in
your worldview that needs to be addressed. If there's an
alarm going off in my house, smoke alarm, I'm not
going to sit there and just take the batteries out
of the thing. There's a fire somewhere or something's going on,
or maybe you know, carbon monoxide alarms going off. I'm

(01:56:44):
gonna the batteries out and pass it out on the floor.
That's what you're doing. But it's with your it's with
your salve agent. Basically. It's like you know, I'm just
going to if if I were, if I were the
demon from screwtape letters, that would be one of my tactics.
It'd be like, all right, guys, well let's look over here.
I'm gonna pull up this one historical thing and say

(01:57:04):
that I don't know. This quote actually says he didn't
like icons too much. Do you ever think about that?
You know? Yeah, antide suirp. But anyway, rants over there,
you go.

Speaker 1 (01:57:19):
Well, And I think the point you're you're highlighting too
is I didn't realize that his brand was, you know,
stay calm, everything's fine. I don't watch Ortland a whole lot.
I've just caught a little bit of his stuff. I'm
familiar that. You know, he's a articulate, well educated man. Uh,
you know, coming from the Protestant perspective. But your point

(01:57:43):
highlights that they're feeling the cultural pressure like they're there.
I've seen some try to dismiss this thing going on
with Orthodoxy, like, you guys aren't really growing. You guys
are so small, you're insignificant. Nobody wants to be Eastern
this type of thing. But it's happening. And I think
within the last really six months, you're at least in

(01:58:04):
my perspective, And I could be biased because I'm already
Orthodox or my algorithm whatever. But what I'm seeing is people,
especially Protestants with pastors like responding to this because that's
where the young men are moving towards, and they can
feel that there's a cultural energy there and they can
feel that the Protestant Church doesn't have the same energy.

(01:58:24):
And I think they're a little confused on where the
energy is coming from. I mean, from from my perspective,
I think it's the Holy Spirit. I think these are
real energies and that people are being drawn for real
purposes and because the questions they're asking are so sincere
in their heart that they're actually being led. As I
told you on your stream, I believe that you know,

(01:58:45):
truth will set you free, and if you knock, God
will answer. And if you're just kind of lukewarm, I
think you'll come. You'll you'll find, you know, just like
with your mediatrix, like you'll find reasons not to. But
if you're actually open and your sincere, I think the
breadcrumbs just keep leading you further and further. So yeah,

(01:59:08):
I just was curious what your thoughts were on that
whole scene and what's going on, because to me, the
fact that they have to make so many videos. And
I saw another channel that was just a vote. I
mean it had like they did apologetics against Catholics and
Orthodox but and I don't remember. The channel wasn't huge,
maybe a few thousand subscribers, but they had multiple, multiple

(01:59:30):
videos that are just focused on Eastern Orthodox even why
people shouldn't convert. And it's like the only reason you're
making this is because it's happening. It's really happening, and
it's not easy, like there is no alter call. Like
everybody who's coming is signing up for a year of Catechism.
So it's quite amazing. I do think it's the Holy
Spirit that's doing it. But anyways, let's get to some

(01:59:51):
super chats. Thank you very much brother for being here again.
Shout out to Cleved Antiquity YouTube channel. He's tagged in
the video title, so you that's a hyperlink. You can
click it go straight to his channel and give him
a sub. Octavian throws in a generous twenty bucks. Thank
you so much. Octavian. He says, you guys need to
quit your heretic ways and join pro Protestant and Catholic Church.

(02:00:14):
Pope Leo and Pope Laura White are the modern day saints.
Oh my god, that if there isn't an indictment against
American Christianity in general, it is the Christian Faith Office
at the White House, led by I think it's Paula White.
It's not Laura White, it's Paula White. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:00:34):
But we're city the African Angels.

Speaker 1 (02:00:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:00:38):
It's like, bah, we're city the African Angels. They're being
dispatched right now.

Speaker 1 (02:00:45):
Oh. Just I mean just within this year in twenty
twenty five, she was at the White House telling people
that if they send her a thousand dollars, they'll be
blessed financially.

Speaker 2 (02:00:54):
Yeah, it's like and and.

Speaker 1 (02:00:56):
The fact that this is the White House, this is
Trump's a fill private pastor. One, it's a woman. Two,
she's a prosperity gospel. Three she's been an adultery like
three times. And four she's corrupt and she's been like it.
Just the list goes on.

Speaker 2 (02:01:11):
Dude, you gotta you gotta learn the uh the ultra
secret grifting techniques that the charismatics are using. Man, it's like, uh,
we're not uh, we're not ending the stream until you
send another three twenty dollars super chest. You gotta plant
the seed. If you don't plant the seed, do you
wanna do you want a five dollar blessing or a
twenty dollar blessing?

Speaker 1 (02:01:31):
You know that's what they're right.

Speaker 2 (02:01:34):
That's crazy man.

Speaker 1 (02:01:35):
You're right though. My methods, my methods here are not
not up to par compared to some of the prosperities preachers.

Speaker 2 (02:01:43):
They gotta you gotta have your own like uh grift
your cryptocurrency, Like.

Speaker 1 (02:01:48):
Yeah, if you don't have the Vatican Bank, you need
a grifto uh a grift option through uh prosperity. So
next one, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (02:01:59):
It was this.

Speaker 1 (02:02:02):
Silver rogue bragre silver Agore five four sixty nine became
a total crew member. Thank you so much, brother, God
bless you. Joe Skill said, I think Wes Huff is
in denial, very possible. God bless him. Hopefully he comes
to the true faith. TS. Three four seven throws in

(02:02:22):
a generous twenty says fellow, who's you're here, we'll shout
out to you. Glad to have found both of your
channels a month ago. I've watched the video on logos
theology multiple times.

Speaker 2 (02:02:31):
Appreciate the work you do well.

Speaker 1 (02:02:32):
Thank you so much, brother, and be curious where you're
at in the great state of Indiana. But God bless you,
thank you very much for the support. Octavian excuse me,
throws in ten says, the last straw for me was
having a lunchable snacks as commute, what grapes and crackers.
I did not participate. Yeah, I think like you're talking

(02:02:56):
about the real presence. If you're interested in the faith
of your ancestors. They took the Euchrist every Sunday, every
liturgical service, and they did believe in the real presence.
Xx Lockstep throws in ten says, thanks, play it well.
Thank you very much for the support. God bless you.
And then over on dono Chat, we had a few

(02:03:17):
comments coming over on dono Chat. Heidi be Mery throws
in a generous fifty dollars. Thank you so much, Heidi.
God bless you, says happy housewarming to you both. Thank
you so much, Heidi. My wife and I do appreciate it.
Jacob throws in three ninety nine and says sub to
dph clips. That's right, I have a clips channel, doctor

(02:03:38):
dph Clips. I'm sure there'll probably be clips from here,
so go subscribe to doctor dph Clips. If you haven't,
and Riley throws in five bucks says, I was baptized
into the Orthodox Church this past April. What books would
you recommend to start a philosophy journey from an Orthodox perspective?

(02:04:00):
Philosophy journey? Well, my first response, and feel free to
chime in. I'd be curious what your thoughts are on this,
especially come on someone coming into the church. Is I
wouldn't begin through philosophy to enter Orthodoxy. In fact, if
you are philosophically sophisticated, I found that people who are
not into philosophy who make philosophy the thing, get confused.

(02:04:23):
It can be difficult. I would actually second what Cleveland
Antiquity said, If you are familiar with philosophy and theology,
why don't you read Loski's The Mystical Theology, because that
will set a front of up basis for how we
understand what's going on as a worldview, and then you
can take that perspective that Losky lays out, and then

(02:04:45):
you can go read something like doctor David Bradshaw.

Speaker 2 (02:04:49):
Essence Energy Distinction.

Speaker 1 (02:04:51):
Or Aristotle East and West. Those are going to be
much more sophisticated, or Yanni Ross anything Yanni Ross is
going to be very, very philosophical. But if you don't
know the Orthodox faith, reading philosophy is not going to
help you. Because those people like j they're Greek Orthodox,
they're rooted in Orthodox. Lasky Fleorofsky, there's a Russian Orthodox,

(02:05:12):
they're rooted in it. You, as a convert, not knowing
the faith and trying to read their stuff, you're going
to come to probably incorrect conclusions. So I would recommend
reading Lives of the Saints, reading basic Catechism stuff. If
you are a little bit more sophisticated, reading Lasky is

(02:05:33):
really important because it gives a sort of aerial overview
of the mystery of what we're dealing with here, and
then you can take the rational strategies of philosophy to
understand things or see the differences between the East and West.
But what would your thoughts be to somebody who is
recently baptized and wanting to look into the philosophy journey

(02:05:57):
or wanting philosophy decks.

Speaker 2 (02:06:00):
My advice to you would be asking your priest.

Speaker 1 (02:06:03):
Yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 2 (02:06:04):
Ask your priest to see what they think, because you
know people are going to give you different stuff and
depending on where you're at, they're gonna know more, right,
so like they're gonna know more your personal situation. Somebody
gave me an example not that long ago. It was
on the phone with my body. I was talking about
a conversation I had with the deacon at our church,
and he was saying, it's like, you know, he's got

(02:06:25):
to be able to give you a prescription for whatever
is broken, right, you all have different injuries, so it's like,
you know, I could be like I can tell you
from my perspective. It's like, oh, yeah, you know, I
had I had a you know, a broken spine, and
I had to have complete like reconstructive surgery or something
that worked really well for me. You say, you have
a toothache, that should do just good. You know, you

(02:06:47):
know it's a different It's it's different for each person.
But if you're interested, I guess some some book recommendations.
I think Lasky's myscal Theology, I agree, would be a
good kind of introduction. Depends on your reading level, though,
if you're reading level is not that strong, you might
get lost reading loss. More like kind of basic approach,

(02:07:08):
maybe like the Pelicon set church history set, because it's
going to dive into. It'll give you the framework at
least historically, and then you can build from there. But
if you're interested in the philosophy, I would say read
myscal Theology, the Easterner Church by Losky, read The Triad
by Palamas, so you have a good understanding of essence energy,
because it's going to flavor everything else that you're gonna read.

(02:07:31):
You can read Orthodox dogmatics that might be good, yeap,
if you're if you're gonna read like beginner like Catechism stuff,
I would say, if you're gonna read stuff like The
Orthodox Way, just know there's some weirdness in it too,
Like some of the illustrations he uses aren't the best,

(02:07:51):
So maybe not the best like intro book, but it
can still give you a somewhat okay overview. I don't
like the like a humanist speaking.

Speaker 1 (02:08:00):
He was talking, well you know that, you know, Lord
have mercy and memory eternal to callistos where. But towards
the end of his life he became pro LGBTQ. So
that's one of the unfortunate things about he did. He
was you know, his books, especially The Orthodox Way, very popular,
helped a lot of people, but he became very soft

(02:08:23):
towards the end of his life on the gay marriage
and homosexuality issue. So keep that in mind. And if
you do, Riley, if because you are baptized, so I
assume you obviously you've already gone through catechism. If you
feel like you've got a strong grasp, and maybe you
are philosophically oriented, I'll give you a real, a real perspective.

(02:08:43):
So if you're interested in philosophy, okay, So anything Florofsky
or a Lowsky standalone is going to be good. Dimitrio
standalone from Romania. I like Yanna Ross because he's coming
out of the Continental tradition. He's not an analytic philosopher
if you're interested in the analytics side anything. Doctor David Bradshaw,

(02:09:05):
he I love his stuff Energy essence.

Speaker 2 (02:09:11):
Like I said, Aristotle East and West, the.

Speaker 1 (02:09:14):
Eastern Natural Theology has a book on natural theology. How
we understand that from an Orthodox perspective? And then these
right here again if you're pretty sure. These are called
empirical dogmatics. I haven't worked through them, but I use
them for my research there. These are done by Metropolitan Nafpatkos,

(02:09:37):
Higher Thales and it uses a lot of John Romand's stuff,
but this like systematically goes through and discusses things, but
is is responding to questions in very academic, like intellectually
sophisticated ways. So I agree with what Ben saying. It
depends on where your reading level is right, And none

(02:09:58):
of this stuff is important for your Orthodoxy. That's why
you know somebody like Father Peter heres to tell you
just read the lives of the saints, read you know,
basic orthodox stuff, and once you're there, you know you
can always dive into deeper waters. But if you're interested
in like the Church Fathers, then you mentioned the Triads,
I would definitely support any if you're interested in like

(02:10:20):
logos theology, Saint Maximus the Confessor, the cosmic mystery of
Jesus Christ, understand the logi logos distinction. Saint John of Damascus,
his Fountain of Knowledge book is literally him talking about
how Orthodoxy can use philosophy in regards to apologetics. And
then the Cappadocians. Anything Cappadocian is going to be good.

(02:10:43):
So if you're you know, Chrisostom, Cappadocians, Damascus, Maximus the Confessor,
Gregory Paula Moss. If you've already consumed all that stuff, dude,
you're probably in like a one percent position of people.
So if you haven't read any of that, that is
plenty plenty on your plate. That'll probably take you a

(02:11:05):
year or more to get through all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:11:07):
So yeah, read read Augustin and get syopped into thinking
like all sorts of like wild latinizer stuff. No, sorry,
now now we're getting controversial.

Speaker 1 (02:11:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there's some people that
are that will die on the hill of Augustine. And
you know, he is a saint, and he had great
things to say, and he was good in some of
his apologetics, but he also had some arrant ways that unfortunately,
it seems like some people are constantly trying to defend
and incorporate in the Orthodox Faith. But anyways, guys, let

(02:11:43):
me just double check. I think that does it for
today's stream. As I said, I'm going to be back
tomorrow morning. We're gonna be doing an early stream at
noon noon Eastern Standard time tomorrow. I'm going over thirty
of what I would consider the most important apologetic argument,
and it's ten for the existence of God, ten for Christianity,
against other world religions or faiths, and then ten for

(02:12:06):
the Orthodox Church, and then we'll be leading that into
a Logos Academy meeting seven o'clock PM Eastern Standard time tomorrow.
If you're interested in actually discussing apologetics, then with a
group of men, so I will see you guys. Then, Ben,
is there anything you want to shill, anything you want
to promote, anything you want to tell people before we

(02:12:26):
wrap up?

Speaker 2 (02:12:27):
Yeah, let me let me pull up my calendar and
I'll kind of shout out what I got coming up next,
and then we can wrap up here. So on the sixteenth,
I'm going to be on Bryce Jay's channel, so you
can catch me over there if you want to check out.
I'll be hanging out with him. On the seventeenth, I'll
have Craig Truglia on my show, so you can swing by.
We'll be yeah, but I think about icons and some

(02:12:51):
other topics. On the twenty first, I'll have a live
stream with Jay Dyer, so if you want to see that,
he'll be on my channel Jay. And then on the
twenty fourth it'll be FDA we'll be we'll be hanging
out yapping about theology. So a couple of cool live
streams coming up soon with some guests lined up there,
and then I'm gonna get back into inviting priests on

(02:13:11):
and doing Q and A. So if you're interested and
I guess you know asking a priest your questions, subscribe
and check out some of those like inquirer Q and
A live streams. That's what I'll be doing with with J.
By the way, we'll be doing a Q and A
stream so cool.

Speaker 1 (02:13:27):
Yeah, go subscribe again the his channels hyper LinkedIn the title,
Just click it. I'll take you right over to his
channel and give our brother a sub and support the
work he's doing. So God bless you brother, you and
your family. What's your wife's name. I'll say a prayer
for Amanda, Amanda, I'll say a prayer for tonight. Well,
God bless you and Amanda. I wish you guys the

(02:13:47):
absolute best and I'll see you guys tomorrow. So as always,
until next time, God bless

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Spooky Podcasts from iHeartRadio

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Americans Discovering Orthodox Christianity with Cleave to Antiquity

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Spooky Podcasts from iHeartRadio

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

Americans Discovering Orthodox Christianity with Cleave to Antiquity

Spooky Podcasts from iHeartRadio